________________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS PAGE ___________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................4 UNIT ONE: DEFINITIONS OF PRAGMATICS………………………………5 1.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………5 1.2. Competences……………………………………………………………………5 1.3. Defining pragmatics……………………………………………………………5 1.3.1. Pragmatics as the study of language in use………………………6 1.3.2. Pragmatics as meaning in interaction (Thomas, 1995)…………8 1.4. Pragmatics contrasted with semantics………………………………………9 1.5. Formative traditions……………………………………………………………11 1.6. Summary…………………………………………………………………………13 1.7. End of unit test…………………………………………………………………13 UNIT TWO: MICROPRAGMATICS...................................................................15 2.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………15 2.2. Competences……………………………………………………………………15 2.3. Deixis……………………………………………………………………………16 2.3.1. Person deixis…………………………………………………………17 2.3.2. Temporal deixis………………………………………………………18 2.3.3. Spatial deixis…………………………………………………………19 2.4. Implicit meaning…………………………………………………………………20 2.5. Conventional ways of conveying implicit meaning – presuppositions……22 2.5.1. Existential presuppositions…………………………………………22 2.5.2. Factive presuppositions……………………………………………23 2.5.3. Non-factive presuppositions………………………………………23 2.5.4. Lexical presuppositions……………………………………………23 2.5.5. Structural presuppositions…………………………………………24 2.6. Summary…………………………………………………………………………24 2.7. End of unit test……………………………………………………………………25 1
6.5.1. The case of dispreferred answers……………………………………60
6.5.2. Sources of activity-type mismatches…………………………………64
6.6. Summary……………………………………………………………………………70
6.7. End of unit test……………………………………………………………………70
UNIT SEVEN: TALK IN INSTITUTIONAL SETTINGS........................................71
7.1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………71
7.2. Competences…………………………………………………………………………71
7.3. The comparative approach…………………………………………………………72
7.4. Formal institutions and question-answer sequences……………………………73
7.5. Non formal institutions………………………………………………………………75
7.5.1. Aspects of asymmetry………………………………………………………75
7.5.2. Asymmetry and power………………………………………………………77
7.6. Summary…………………………………………………………………………………83
7.7. End of unit test…………………………………………………………………………84
BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………….84
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Introduction
The course entitled Introduction to pragmatics covers some of the topics in the field of language in use and the construction of meaningful communication. Though pragmatics seems to be a slippery field in linguistics as compared to phonetics, morphology or syntax, you will hopefully further develop your analytical skills of investigating language, and will be able to use it appropriately, depending on the context.
By the end of this course students will be able to:
• become familiar with new theoretical and methodological perspectives in the
field of pragmatics;
• apply the concepts to the analysis of the processes involved in communication;
• communicate (orally and in writing) in English according to pragmatic
principles in a variety of contexts
• manage the process of learning
Preliminary knowledge Students will need to be familiar with phonetics, morphology and syntax.
Resources Students will need the course notes as a resource for learning.
Structure of the course The course is structured into 7 units, each unit consisting of: the objectives, some theoretical input, examples, end-of-unit tests, tasks to be performed, as well as some issues to be discussed and solved. The end-of-unit tests and the while-reading tasks are compulsory.
Study time The average study-time for each unit is of 2 hours.
End-of-course assessment At the end of the semester each student will get a mark in the following way: 75% for the analysis of a text at student’s choice, which will be defended orally during the exam, and 25% for the end-of-unit tests.
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_______________________________________________________________________ UNIT ONE: DEFINITIONS OF PRAGMATICS ___________________________________________________________________________ Contents:
1.1. Introduction
1.2. Competences
1.3. Defining pragmatics
1.3.1. Pragmatics as the study of language in use
1.3.2. Pragmatics as meaning in interaction (Thomas, 1995)
1.4. Pragmatics contrasted with semantics
1.5. Formative traditions
1.6. Summary
1.7. End of unit test
1.1. Introduction In this unit a number of definitions of pragmatics are presented, in relation to other fields of linguistics, such as phonetcis and phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Since both semantics and pragmatics deal with the concept of „meaning”, a the two branches of linguistics are compared and contrasted. Finally, the traditional fields that contributed to formation of pragmatics are discussed.
1.2. Competences On completion of UNIT ONE students will be able to:
• get familiar with basic pragmatic definitions • identify units of pagmatic analyis • describe and explain differences between „meaning” in pragmatics and
semantics
Study time for UNIT ONE: 2 hours
1.3. Defining pragmatics
Linguistics is traditionally divided into component disciplines, such as phonetics, phonology,
morphology, syntax and semantics. Each of them is related to a specific unit of analysis. Thus,
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as you have already learnt, phonetics and phonology deal with speech sounds. Phonetics
identifies constituent parts of a continuous stream of sound and focuses either on the physical
properties of the sounds, or on their manner of production, while the basic unit of analysis for
phonology is the ‘phoneme’. Morphology investigates ‘morphemes’, the minimal linguistic
signs, in the sense that they are the minimal units carrying a conventional meaning or
contributing to the meaning of larger units, and the ways in which they combine to form
words. Syntax studies sentence formation processes in accordance with language-specific
rules, starting from words or ‘lexical items’. Semantics explores the meaning of linguistic
units, typically at the level of words (lexical semantics) or at the level of sentences or more
The question that we ask ourselves is ‘What do all these branches have in common?’
According to Verschueren (1999), they share a focus on language resources (the ingredients
that make up a language as a tool that people use for expressive and communicative
purposes). Units of analysis are identified, thus leading to a manageable division of labour.
Pragmatics is a relatively new field of linguistics, and has been defined in most textbooks on
linguistics as “meaning in use” or “meaning in context”. As implied in the above definitions,
pragmatics cannot be identified with a specific unit of analysis. Then what is pragmatics?
1.3.1 Pragmatics as the study of language in use (Verschueren, 1999; Mey, 1996)
At the most elementary level, pragmatics can be defined as the study of language use, or the
study of linguistic phenomena from the point of view of their usage properties and processes
(Verschueren, 1999). The linguistic phenomena to be studied from the point of view of their
usage can be situated at any level of structure. The question pragmatics asks is: How are the
language resources used? Thus, in Verschueren’s view, pragmatics is not an additional
component of a theory of language, but it offers a different perspective.
There are no linguistic phenomena, at any level of structure that a pragmatic perspective can
afford to ignore.
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Examples (source: Verschueren, 1999)
At the level of speech sounds: Most speakers of languages with a significant
degree of dialectal variation, who have grown up with a local dialect but who
were socialised into the use of a standard variety through formal education, will
find that the language they use sounds quite different depending on whether they
are in their professional context or speaking to their parents or siblings. At the
level of morphemes and words: there are pragmatic restrictions on and
implications of aspects of derivational morphology. Consider the derivational
relationship between grateful and ungrateful or kind and unkind. The reason why
this relationship is not reversed, with a basic lexeme meaning “ungrateful” from
which a word meaning “grateful” would be derived by means of the negative
prefix, has everything to do with a system of social norms which emphasises the
need for gratefulness and kindness. Grammatical choices of morphemes are also
subject to pragmatic constraints. Consider the recent changes in socio-political
awareness which have made it difficult to interpret the generic use of the personal
pronoun he in a gender-neutral way. At the level of word meaning (lexical
semantics), more than what would be regarded as ‘dictionary meaning’ has to be
taken into account as soon as a word gets used. Many words cannot be
understood unless aspects of world knowledge are invoked.
For example, topless district requires knowledge about city areas with high
concentration of establishments for (predominantly male) entertainment where
scantly dressed hostesses or performers are the main attraction. Mental midwives
which appears in a newspaper headline, cannot be understood until after reading
the article, which describes patients in a mental hospital (a term which requires
institutional knowledge) assisting a fellow patient when giving birth.
Fiind similar examples of the relationship between pragmatics (as language in context, language in use) and phonetics/morphology/syntax in English and/or Romanian.
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Pragmatics is “the science of language seen in relation to its users” (Mey, 1996:5), and it
starts out from an active conception of language. For example, by saying “Clean your boots”,
the speaker is performing the act of ordering the hearer to do something. This concept of
“action” will be dealt with when dealing with the speech act theory.
More recent textbooks on linguistics tend to equate pragmatics with “speaker meaning”, on
the one hand, and “utterance interpretation” on the other hand. The former puts the focus of
attention on the producer of the message, including here the social context in which the
utterance is produced, and the latter focuses on the receiver of the message, which in practice
means largely ignoring the social constraints on the production of the utterance.
1.3.2. Pragmatics as meaning in interaction (Thomas, 1995)
Thomas (1995) takes view of pragmatics as “meaning in interaction”, this definition reflecting the view that meaning is not something which is inherent in the words alone (semantics), nor is it produced by the speaker alone, nor by the hearer alone. Meaning in interaction captures the dynamic process of meaning creation, involving the negotiation of meaning between speaker and hearer, and the context of the utterance. Here is an example of the dynamic process of meaning creation in a short conversation
between A and B.
Example (sorce: Cook, 1989: 55)
A: what have you got to do this afternoon?
B: oh I’m going to repair the child bar
A: what do you mean CHILD bar
B: it’s er metal bar goes acr- has to be fixed from one side of thecar I mean from
one side of the back seat to the other for the BABY seat to go on
A: AH
In the example above, one of the speaekrs does not understand the term “child bar”, which
causes a temporary breakdown in communication. Together, they negotiate a solution to the
problem, the first speaker A asking the second speaker B to explain the term, and the second
speaker reformulating several times his explanation to make it clearer.
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1.4. Pragmatics contrasted with semantics
Semantics, as we have already seen, is a branch of linguistics devoted to the study of
meaning. The question that can be raised is then: What is meaning?
Paraphrase the various meanings of the noun ‘meaning’ and the verb ‘to mean’ in the examples below:
a. I did not mean to do it.
b. Life without love has no meaning.
c. A red light means stop.
d. A flower behind the right ear means that the person is not engaged.
e. What is the meaning of ‘axiology’?
f. The sentence James murdered Max means that ‘someone called James
deliberately killed someone called Max’.
g. By ‘my best friend’ I meant Sue Carter not Sally Brown.
As you can notice, you have found a number of semantic meanings of the words “meaning”
and “to mean”. Pragmatics is the study of all those aspects of meaning not captured in
semantic theory. In order to better understand the two approaches to meaning (semantic and
pragmatic) we will see some of the basic differences between the two fields.
1. Semantics deals with those conditions that make a sentence true. For example, the
semantic meaning of the sentence ‘Sam is a man’ includes the following truth conditions:
a. Sam is a person.
b. Sam is an adult.
c. Sam is a male.
d. Sam is an adult male person.
Pragmatics, on the other hand, deals with felicity conditions of an utterance.
Example The utterance ‘I promise to be back early’ means a promise on condition a future
action is involved: ‘I’ll come back early’. (See the unit Speech Act Theory).
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2. In semantics meaning is a dyadic relation “X means Y”. In the example above, “Sam is a
man” means Sam is an adult, male person. In pragmatics meaning is a triadic relation
“Speaker means Y by X”.
Example A: Shall we see that film tonight?
B: I have a headache
The speaker B means NO by saying I HAVE A HEADACHE
3. In semantics we speak about sentence meaning. Sentence meaning is predictable from the
meaning of the lexicon items and grammatical features of the sentence. In pragmatics, we
deal with utterance meaning. Utterance meaning consists of the meaning of the sentence
plus considerations of the intentions of the Speaker (the speaker may intend to refuse the
invitation to go to the film), interpretation of the Hearer (the Hearer may interpret the
utterance as a refusal, or not), determined by Context and background knowledge.
It is particularly important to remember that meaning, as a defining feature of what
pragmatics is concerned with, is not seen as a stable counterpart to linguistic form. Rather,
it is dynamically generated in the process of using language. Also, pragmatics as the study
of ‘meaning in context’ does not imply that one can automatically arrive at a pragmatic
understanding of the phenomena involved just by knowing all the extralinguistic
information, because ‘context’ is not a static element. The following example illustrates
that the contextual information, given in brackets, is not enough to make sense of what is
going on in the interaction.
Example (source: Mey, 1993:8-9)
(Two linguists, call them Jacob and Mark, are coming out of a lecture hall at a
university which is neither’s home territory, but where Jacob has been before; so
he thinks he knows the campus, more or less)
Jacob: Do you know the way back to the dining hall? We can go in my car.
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(Marks gets into the car; after the first turn, he starts giving directions, which
greatly amazes Jacob, and irritates him a little – he was under the impression
that ‘he’ needed to guide the other, not the other way round. After several more
turns – which Jacob is taking at greater and greater speeds, so the other doesn’t
get a chance to interfere – Marks says:)
Mark: Oh, I thought you didn’t know the way to the campus.
Jacob: I thought you didn’t know!
(whereupon they both start laughing)
Clearly, in this case Mark takes Jacob’s original utterance not as a ‘real question’, but as a
‘pre-request’ (preparing the ground for the request to be given instructions on how to get to
the dining hall). Jacob. On the other hand, who really wanted to know if Mark was familiar
with the campus, because otherwise he wanted to give him directions, or a ride, doesn’t
understand the other’s reaction. The moment the situation is resolved, we can look back and
understand what has happened.
If the concept of ‘context’ is established independently of the ongoing interaction between
interlocutors, it is completely useless. It is precisely the dynamic development of the
conversation that gives us a clue to understanding.
1.5. Formative traditions
A number of traditions have contributed to the formation of the field of pragmatics, but not all
of them will be listed below. The fields that will be mentioned are those that will also
constitute the topics of the units in this textbook. The word “pragmatics” has been first used
by Morris, in 1938. Since then, a number of fields have brought their contributions.
1. Philosophy has provided fertile ideas in pragmatics, especially through Wittgenstein’s
suggestions (1958, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Philosophical Investigations) that
understanding a language, and by implication having a grasp of the meaning of
utterances, involves knowing the nature of the activity in which the utterances play a
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role. This is part of the doctrine of “language games”, which produced two of the main
theories underlying present-day pragmatics: Speech act theory (Austin and Searle)
and Logic of conversation (Grice).
To see the force of Wittgensteing’s preoccupations with the matrix activity within
which language usage takes place, consider the following case:
Example (Source: Levinson, 1994:67).
In a game of cricket there is a general rule of silence during play, but there are a
number of distinct cries that punctuate proceedings, for example howzat or over.
It would be impossible to describe the meaning or function of these cries without
referring to aspects of the game and their role within the game. So, for example,
howzat functions as a claim directed to the umpire by one of the fielding side that
one of the batsmen is “out”, while over functions as an instruction to reverse the
direction of bowling.
Try to interpret the functions of the following utterances recorded during a
basketball game:
1. Here!
2. C’mmon Peter.
Beautiful tip!
Right over here !
The ‘language game’ theory will be also dealt with in the unit on Context.
2. The sociological tradition of ethnomethodology, initiated by Garfinkel produced the
wider field of conversation analysis. Though CA (conversation analysis) occupies
itself with minute details of interactions, the underlying question is far from modest:
face-to-face interaction becomes the subject of investigation in view of clues it
provides for an understanding of human experience and behaviour.
Pragmatics, thus serves, within the realm of the language-related sciences, as a point of
convergence for the interdisciplinary fields of investigation and as a latch between these and
the components of language resources
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1.6. Summary Pragmatics is:
• ‘the science of language in relation to its users’ (Mey, 1993)
• ‘meaning in interaction’ (Thomas, 1995)
• ‘the study of language in use’ (Verschueren, 1999)
Meaning, as a defining feature of what pragmatics is concerned with, is not seen
as a stable counterpart to linguistic form. Rather, it is dynamically generated in
the process of using language (Thomas, 1995, Verschueren, 1999).
Pragmatics is the study of those aspects of meaning which are not captured by
semantics:
• meaning is a triadic relation: speaker means Y by X
• utterance meaning consists of the meaning of the sentence plus
considerations of the intentions of the Speaker, interpretation of the
Hearer, determined by context and background knowledge.
• for an utterance to mean something it has to fulfil certain ‘felicity
conditions’.
1.7. End of UNIT TEST
After a thorough reading of the information detailed in this UNIT, take some time
to answer the questions below. To check your answers, refer back to the material
in this unit and take part in the tutorial discussion:
1. Examine the description of a part of a linguistic day in Langford’s life (as
a university teacher) and identify the situations in which he is a producer
(speaker) of language, the situations in which he is a consumer (hearer) of
language, and the situations in which he is both. (Source: Langford,
1994:2-7)
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‘I wake with my alarm. I say to myself, but not out loud, a word or two that
should perhaps not be printed here. I stagger to the bathroom, shave and
generally prepare myself for the first phase of the day. […]
Having prepared myself for the day, I go down to the kitchen and there, in
the process of preparing my breakfast, encounter yet more written messages as
they silently scream at me from food manufacturers packets, bottles and
cartoons. I turn on the portable television set, strategically placed on a worktop
so as not to miss any vital bit of breakfast television whilst standing guard over
slowly simmering porridge. I now encounter not my language, but the language
of other people specifically produced by them as a means of communicating
something to me along with several million others.
The language these people produce is mostly spoken language and whilst
sometimes it is directed at me as if I were a partner in a conversation they are
holding, at other times the language is directed at actual conversational
partners, either present in the studio or linked by microphones, TV monitors and
other electronic wizardry. But the odd thing is that whilst the talk is produced,
for example, as part of a conversation involving just those who are indeed in the
studio, I nevertheless get the impression that the conversation is being produced
specifically for me, and millions like me, as a potential overhearing audience.
Furthermore, the participants in such talk somehow make it clear through the
way that they talk, that this is precisely the sort of impression they want me to be
having.’
2. Describe a similar linguistic day in your life.
3. Provide different contexts for the following utterances to have
different functions:
It’s hot in here.
Can you pass me the salt?
There’s a pencil on the table.
I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
It’s a beautiful day today.
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UNIT TWO: MICROPRAGMATICS ___________________________________________________________________________ Contents:
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Competences
2.3. Deixis
2.3.1. Person deixis
2.3.2. Temporal deixis
2.3.3. Spatial deixis
2.4. Implicit meaning
2.5. Conventional ways of conveying implicit meaning – presuppositions
2.5.1. Existential presuppositions
2.5.2. Factive presuppositions
2.5.3. Non-factive presuppositions
2.5.4. Lexical presuppositions
2.5.5. Structural presuppositions
2.6. Summary
2.7. End of unit test
2.1. Introduction
In this unit, the term ‘micropragmatics’, used by some pragmaticians (e.g. Mey,
1993) to refer to the pragmatics of lesser units of human language use, such as
questions of deixis and implicit meaning, is being discussed. Pragmatics looks at
language as a form of action – when we say something we also perform an action.
It is anchored in a real-world context, and it pays attention to types of meaning that
go beyond what is ‘given’ by the language form itself, or what is literally said.
Thus, implicit meaning becomes a topic of investigation.
2.2. Competences On completion of UNIT TWO students will be able to:
• get familiar with the notions of ‘deixis’ and ‘implicit meaning’; • apply the concepts to language analysis • communicate meaningfully by using the appropriate ways of pointing to
the world via language
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Study time for UNIT TWO: 2 hours
2.3. Deixis
For the beginning, let’s suppose (with Mey, 1993:89) that you are in a foreign country, sitting
in your hotel room at night. There is a knock at the door. You don’t open the door, but ask:
‘Who’s there?’. The visitor answers: ‘It’s me’. What do you do then?
There are two possibilities. Either you recognise the visitor’s voice, and then decide whether
or not to open the door. If you don’t, then what do you do with a voice that refers to a ‘me’,
when you don’t know who that ‘me’ is. Since the ‘me’ always refers to ‘I’, and every ‘I’ is a
‘speaking me’, the utterance ‘It’s me’ is always and necessarily true, but totally uninformative
to establish a speaker’s identity.
In more technical terms, there is no known ‘referent’ for ‘me’ by virtue of the linguistic
expression alone. We are dealing here with a problem that is basically philosophical, but
which has serious consequences both for theoretical linguistics and for our use of language.
We use language to refer to persons or things, directly or indirectly. In the first case (direct
reference), we have names available that lead us to persons or things. In the second case
(indirect reference), we need to have recourse to other, linguistic as well as non-linguistic,
strategies in order to establish the correct reference. For example, ‘Me who’ or ‘Who’s
talking?’
“Deixis” is a technical term (from Greek) for one of the most basic things we do with
language. It means “pointing” via language, and any linguistic form used to accomplish this
pointing is called deictic expression or indexicals. They are among the first forms to be
spoken by young children and can be used to indicate
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• people via person deixis (‘me’, ‘you’), or social deixis
• location via spatial deixis (‘here’, ‘there’)
• time via temporal deixis (‘now’, ‘then’)
• and discourse via discourse deixis (referring expressions in texts)
2.3.1. Person deixis
The distinction described above involves person deixis, with the speaker ‘I’ and the addressee
‘you’. To learn these deictic expressions, we have to discover that each person in a
conversation shifts from being ‘I’ to being ‘you’. According to Yule (1996:10), all young
children go through a stage in their learning where the distinction seems problematic and they
say things like ‘Read you a story’ (instead of ‘me’).
Person deixis operates on a basic three part division, the speaker (I), the addressee (you) and
other(s) (he, she, it). As Yule (1996) observes, in many languages these deictic expressions
are elaborated with markers of social status. Expressions which indicate higher status are
described as honorifics (social deixis).
For example, in French and Romanian there are two different forms that encode a
social contrast within person deixis, ‘tu’ (tu) and ‘vous’(dumneavoastra). This is
known as T/V distinction.
In deictic terms, third person is not a direct participant in basic interaction, and being an
outsider, is more distant. Using a third person form, where a second person would be possible,
is one way of communicating distance. This can also be done for humorous or ironic
purposes, as in the following examples:
Yule (1996:11):
‘Would his highness like some coffee?’
The distance associated with third person forms is also used to make potential
accusations less direct, as in:
Somebody didn’t clean up after himself.
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There is also a potential ambiguity in the use in English of the first person plural.
There is an exclusive we (speaker plus others, excluding addressee) and inclusive
we (speaker and addressee included), as in the following possible reply to the
accusation:
We clean up after ourselves around here.
The ambiguity present here provides a subtle opportunity for a hearer to decide what was
communicated. Either the hearer decides that he/she is a member of the group to whom the
rule applies, or an outsider.
2.3.2. Temporal deixis
Deixis is a form of referring tied to the speaker’s context, with some basic distinctions being
‘near speaker’ versus ‘away form speaker’. In English, the ‘near speaker’, or proximal terms
are ‘this, ‘here’, ‘now’. Proximal terms are typically interpreted in terms of the speaker’s
location, or the deictic centre, so that ‘now’ is generally understood as referring to some point
or period of time that has the time of the speaker’s utterance at its centre. The psychological
basis of temporal deixis is that we treat events and objects that move towards us (into view) or
away from us (out of view).
One basic type of temporal deixis in English is in the choice of verb tense, which has only two
basic forms, the present and the past (the proximal and the distal). The past tense is always
used in English in those if-clauses that mark events presented by the speaker as not being
close to present reality.
If I had a yacht I would sail around the world.
The idea expressed in the example is not treated as having happened in the past. It is
presented as deictically distant from the speaker’s current situation. So distant, that it actually
communicates the negative (we infer that the speaker has no yacht).
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2.3.3. Spatial deixis
The concept of distance is relevant to spatial deixis, where the relative location of people and
things is being indicated. Contemporary English makes use of two adverbs, ‘here’ and ‘there’,
for the basic distinction. Some verbs of motion, such as ‘come’ and ‘go’, retain deictic sense
when they are used to mark movement toward the speaker (‘Come to bed’) or away the
speaker (‘Go to bed’).
It is important to remember that location from the speaker’s perspective can be fixed mentally
as well as physically. Speakers temporarily away from their home location will often continue
to use ‘here’ to mean the (physically distant) home location. According to Yule, speakers also
seem to be able to project themselves (deictic projection) into other locations prior to actually
being in those locations. Such a deictic projection is accomplished via dramatic performance
when using direct speech to represent the person, location, and feelings of someone else.
Yule, 1996:13
E.g.: I was looking at this little puppy in a cage with such a sad look on its face.
It was like, ‘Oh, I’m so unhappy here, will you set me free?’
All indexical expressions refer to certain world conditions, either subjective or objective in
nature. The following story, borrowed from Levinson 1983:68) is meant to illustrate the
importance of having the right point of view, and how one can anticipate the way people will
construe the world in terms of their point of view.
A melamed (Hebrew teacher) discovering that he had left his comfortable
slippers back in the house, sent a student after them with a note for his wife. The
note read: “Send me your slippers with this boy”. When the student asked why he
had written ‘your’ slippers, the melamed answered: ‘Yold! (Fool) If I wrote ‘my’
slippers, she would read ‘my slippers’ and would send her slippers. What could I
do with her slippers? So I wrote ‘your’ slippers, she’ll read ‘your’ slippers and
send me mine.”
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Identify and analyse indexicals in the following text:
1. Debby: Go anywhere today?
2. Dan: Yes, we went down to Como. Up by bus, and back by hydrofoil.
3. Debby: Anything to see there?
4. Dan: Perhaps not the most interesting of Italian towns, but it’s worth the
trip.
5. Debby: I might do that next Saturday.
6. Jane: What do you mean when you say perhaps not the most interesting
of Italian towns?
7. Jack: He means certainly not the most interesting…
8. Dan: Just trying to be polite.
2.4. Implicit meaning
Let’s remember
Remember from Speech Act Theory that pragmatics looks at language as
a form of action – when we say something we also perform an action (we
make requests, ask for information, apologise, order, etc). It is anchored
in a real-world context, and it pays attention to types of meaning that go
beyond what is ‘given’ by the language form itself, or what is literally
said. Thus, implicit meaning becomes a topic of investigation.
There are three things involved here: the impossibility of complete explicitness, conventional
linguistic means to cope with this impossibility, and strategies to exploit it. We will next look
at the impossibility of complete explicitness and at presuppositions as a carrier of implicit
meaning.
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Let’s take the following example (adapted from Verschueren (1999:25-26):
imagine that Debby and Dan are at a dinner party and Debby asks Dan ‘Go
anywhere today?’ The difference between what people usually say and what they
mean, and the impossibility of complete explicitness, can be seen if we imagine
what Debby would have to say to clarify in completely explicit linguistic terms
what she means when asking the above question.
‘Assuming that we are sitting close enough together for you, Dan, having
normal hearing capabilities and a workable knowledge of English, to understand
me, I am addressing you. I also assume that we share some knowledge about
where we are, and why we are here. Further, I guess that you, like me, do not
want us to sit here silently but that we both want to interact socially and sociably
by means of a conversation. Since we also share the knowledge that it is now
dinner time, that the main part of the day is over, and that during a day like there
are many things one can do, a basic option being either to remain here or to
leave, it seems reasonable for me to start a conversation by asking you whether
you went somewhere today. So I am asking you: ‘Did you go anywhere today?’
And I would very much appreciate it if you could say something in response to
the question’ (from Verschueren, 1999:26)
The world of unexpressed information which an utterance carries along is called background
information (common knowledge or common ground). Because of the impossibility of full
explicitness, and the need to ‘explicate’ aspects of general background information to achieve
full understanding of any instance of language use, the term explicature has been introduced.
For example, the Center is closed in January, requires as ‘explicatures’ a further specification
or which ‘Center’ it is that one is talking about, of whether ‘January’ is meant to be January of
a specific year or of every year, and of whether ‘closed’ means closed for every living
creature or only for those people who come to use the center for the usual purposes.
Explicatures are simply representations of implicit forms of meaning.
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2.5. Conventional means for conveying implicit meaning - presuppositions
Language provides numerous conventionalised carriers of implicit meaning, which are tools
for linking explicit content to relevant aspects of background information.
Presuppositions
A presupposition is something the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an
utterance. Speakers, not sentences, have presuppositions. Thus, we can identify some of the
potentially assumed information that would be associated with the following utterance
(Verschueren, 1999):
Mary’s brother bought three horses.
In producing the utterance, the speaker will normally be expected to have the presuppositions
that a person called Mary exists and that she has a brother. The speaker may also hold the
more specific presupposition that Mary has only one brother and that she has a lot of money.
All of these presuppositions are the speaker’s and all of them can be wrong.
According to Verschuere (1999:27), there are linguistic forms as indicators of potential
presuppositions, which can only become actual presuppositions in contexts with the speakers.
2.5.1. Existential presuppositions
Existential presuppositions presuppose the existence, at a given place and/or time, of entities
in a ‘real’ world.
E.g: possessives (‘your car’ presupposes ‘you have a car’), and more generally
any definite noun phrase.
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The following example: The King of France is talking to Napoleon said at this time in history
and using the present tense, is devoid of real meaning because the existential presuppositions
carried by the referring expressions ‘The King of France’ and ‘Napoleon’ are not satisfied.
2.5.2. Factive presuppositions
A number of verbs, such as know, realise regret, or phrases involving be aware, be glad, have
factive presuppositions.
Yule, 1996:28-29:
E.g.:
She didn’t realise he was ill. (He was ill)
We regret telling him (We told hem)
I wasn’t aware that she was married. (She was married)
I am glad that it’s over (It’s over).
2.5.3. Non-factive presuppositions
There are examples of non-factive (presuppositions assumed not to be true) presuppositions
associated with a number of verbs: dream, imagine, pretend
Eg: I dreamed that I was rich (I wasn’t rich)
2.5.4. Lexical presuppositions
The use of one form with its asserted meaning is conventionally interpreted with the
presupposition that another (non-asserted) meaning is understood. For example verbs like
manage (presupposing tried), stop, start.
E.g. He stopped smoking (He used to smoke)
They started complaining (They weren’t complaining before)
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2.5.5. Structural presuppositions
Some sentence structures have been analysed as conventionally presupposing that part of the
structure is already assumed to be true. For example, the wh-question constructions in English
are interpreted with the presupposition that the information after the wh-form is already
known.
E.g.: When did you leave (You left)
Where did you buy the bike (You bought the bike).
We have seen that what people say carries a whole world of unexpressed information, and
that it would be impossible to communicate with complete explicitness. Presuppositions are
one form of conveying aspects of implicit meaning, and we say that speakers hold a number
of presuppositions when producing utterances.
Analyse the following utterances in terms of presuppositions:
1. I regret the year of prosperity and peace has ended.
2. The UN managed to bring about peace.
3. A time of prosperity and peace will return.
4. What the UN did was to bring about peace in Bosnia.
5. 1996, which was a year of prosperity and peace, will be remembered forever.
2.6. Summary Deixis means “pointing” via language, and any linguistic form used to
accomplish this pointing is called deictic expression or indexical. Indexicals are
among the first forms to be spoken by young children and can be used to
indicate:
• people via person deixis (‘me’, ‘you’), or social deixis
• time via temporal deixis (‘now’, ‘then’)
• location via spatial deixis (‘here’, ‘there’)
• discourse via discourse deixis (referring expressions in texts)
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A presupposition is something the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making
an utterance. Speakers, not sentences, have presuppositions.
• Existential presuppositions
• Factive presuppositions
• Non-factive presuppositions
• Lexical presuppositions
• Structural presuppositions
2.7. End of UNIT TEST Study the following sign, appearing at selected private parking sites throughout
the Greater Chicago area (from Mey, Pragmatics, 1993:15)
ALL UNAUTHORIZED VECHICLES
WILL BE TOWED BY LINCOLN
TOWING SERVICE TO 4884 N.CLARK
FEE $80.00 CASH,
VISA & MASTER CHARGE ACCEPTED
PHONE 561-4433
QUESTIONS:
a. What does this sign tell you explicitly? And implicitly?
b. Who do you think is the sender of the message?
The owner of the parking lot?
The owner of the phone number?
The police?
(Argue your point of view)
c. Judging from the text of the message, would you say that illegal parking is a
criminal act in Chicago?
(Justify your answer).
25
UNIT THREE: CONVERSATIONAL PRINCIPLE ___________________________________________________________________________ Contents:
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Competences
3.3. Conversational implicatures
3.4. Cooperative principle
3.5. Flouting the maxims
3.5.1. Flouts exploiting the maxim of Quantity
3.5.2. Flouts exploiting the maxim of Quality
3.5.3. Flouts exploiting the maxim of Relation
3.5.4. Flouts exploiting the maxim of Manner
3.5.5. Other ways of not observing the maxims
3.6. Summary
3.7. End of unit test
3.1. Introduction This unit tries to answer a number of questions raised by pragmaticians . If people
can mean different things with the same words, how do human beings interpret
what is meant from what is said? Why is there a divergence of function and form,
or why do not people speak directly and say what they mean? For an answer we
have to look at the work of Paul Grice, who attempted to explain how, by means of
shared rules of conversations, competent language-users manage to understand one
another.
3.2. Competences On completion of THREE ONE students will be able to:
• get familiar with the Cooperative Principle • understand how competent users of language communicate sucessfully • be able to use their linguistic resources to convey meaning indirectly
26
Let’s remember
Remember from last unit that language is anchored in a real-world
context, and it pays attention to types of meaning that go beyond what is
‘given’ by the language form itself, or what is literally said. Thus, implicit
meaning can be conveyed conventionally (via presuppositions). This unit
deals with another way of conveying implicit meaning: conversational
implicatures.
3.3. Conversational implicatures
The philosopher Paul Grice was invited to give lectures at Harvard University, and it was
there in 1967 that he first outlined his theory of implicature. A shorter version of these
lectures was published in 1975 in a paper Logic and conversation. Later, Grice expanded
upon his earlier work and it proved to be one of the most influential theories in the
development of pragmatics. Grice’s theory is an attempt at explaining how a hearer gets from
what is said to what is meant, from the level of expressed meaning to the level of implied
meaning.
The basic assumption in conversation is that (according to Grice, 1975), unless otherwise
indicated, the participants are adhering to some shared rules of conversation, which he calls
the Co-operative Principle. Let’s have a look at an example:
(Levinson, 1983)
E.g. A: I hope you brought the bread and the cheese.
B: Ah, I brought the bread.
In order for A to understand B’s reply, A has to assume that B is co-operating, and has given
B the right amount of information. But he didn’t mention the cheese. If he had brought the
cheese he would have said so. He must intend that A infer that what is not mentioned was not
brought. In this case B has conveyed more than he said via a conversational implicature.
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Before going into Grice’s theory of conversational implicature, we shall try to clarify two
terms, implicature and inference, and the corresponding verbs to imply and to infer. The verb
to imply is used when the speaker generates some meaning beyond the semantic meaning of
the words. Implicature (term devised by Grice) refers to the implied meaning generated
intentionally by the speaker.
Infer, on the other hand, refers to the situation in which the hearer deduces meaning from
available evidence. Inference is the inferred meaning deduced by the hearer, which may or
may not be the same as the speaker’s intended implicature.
Here is an example which illustrates the distinction between implicature and inference:
(source: Thomas, 1995:58-59)
The following example is taken from a children’s book, set in Holland under
William the Silent, during the war with Spain. Maurice was a boy caught up in
the events; Theo was a manservant:
Tears filled his eyes; he cried easily in these days, not having full control of
himself, and Theo’s fate caused him great grief. The Duchess had told him that
she had been able to discover nothing, and therefore it was assumed that he had
been released as entirely innocent. Maurice was convinced that nothing of the
kind had happened, and assumed that the Duchess had found out that Theo was
dead and had invented the agreeable solution in order not to distress him. He
could not do anything about it and had accepted the statement in silence, but he
fretted a great deal over Theo’s death.
Here, the Duchess implied that Theo was all right. Maurice understood what she had implied,
but nevertheless inferred the opposite (that Theo was dead).
3.4. Cooperative Principle
Let’s consider the following scenario (from Cook, 1989). There is a woman sitting on a park
bench and a large dog lying on the ground in front of the bench. A man comes along and sits
down on the bench.
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Source: Cook, 1989
Man: Does your dog bite?
Woman: No
(The man reaches down to pet the dog. The dog bite’s the man’s hand)
Man: Ouch! You said your dog doesn’t bite.
Woman: He doesn’t. But that’s not my dog.
The problem here is the man’s assumption that more was communicated than was said. In
other words, the man assumed that the woman, by saying NO, meant that the dog lying at her
feet was her dog, and it didn’t bite.
From the man’s perspective, the woman’s answer provides less information than expected:
she might be expected to provide the information stated in the last line (But that’s not my
dog}.
The concept of there being an expected amount of information provided in conversation is
just one aspect of the more general idea that people involved in a conversation will co-operate
with each other. In most circumstances, the assumption of co-operation is so pervasive that it
can be stated as a co-operative principle, which was elaborated by H.P.Grice (1975) in four
sub-principles or maxims.
Grice’s principle is formulated as follows: ‘Make your contribution such as is required, at
the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in
which you are engaged’.
According to this principle we interpret language on the assumption that its sender is obeying
(observing) four maxims:
1. Maxim of Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current
purpose of the exchange. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
2. Maxim of Quality: Do not say what you believe to be false; Do not say that for which you
lack evidence.
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3. Maxim of Relation: Be relevant
4. The Maxim of Manner: Avoid obscurity of expression; Avoid ambiguity; Be brief; Be
orderly.
The maxims are unstated assumptions we have in conversations. We assume that people are
normally going to provide an appropriate amount of information; we assume that they are
telling the truth, being relevant, and trying to be as clear as they can. Because these principles
are assumed in normal interaction, speakers rarely mention them. However, there are certain
expressions used to mark that speakers may be in danger of not fully adhering to the
principles. These expressions are called ‘hedges’.
Source: Yule (1996:38-39)
Quality:
a. As far as I know, they’re married.
b. I may be mistaken, but I thought I saw a wedding ring on her finger.
c. I’m not sure if this is right, but I heard it was a secret ceremony in Hawaii.
d. He couldn’t live without her, I guess.
Quantity:
a. As you probably know, I am afraid of dogs.
b. So, to cut a long story short, we grabbed our stuff and ran.
c. I won’t bore you with all the details, but it was an exciting trip.
Relation:
a. I don’t know if this is important, but some of the files are missing.
b. This may sound like a dumb question, but whose handwriting is this?
c. Not to change the subject, but is this related to the budget?
Manner:
a. This may be a bit confused, but I remember being in a car.
b. I’m not sure if this makes sense, but the car had no lights.
c. I don’t know if this is clear at all, but I think the other car was reversing.
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3.5. Flouting the maxims
The situations which chiefly interested Grice were those in which a speaker blatantly,
deliberately, fails to observe a maxim, not with any intention of deceiving or misleading, but
because the speaker wants to prompt the hearer to look for a meaning which is different from
the expressed meaning. These are intended violations of the maxims; the sender intends the
receiver to perceive them as such. If the sender does not intend violations to be perceived as
such, or if the receiver does not realise that they are deliberate, then communication
degenerates into lying, or simply breaks down.
3.5.1. Flouts exploiting the maxim of Quantity
A flout exploiting a maxim of Quantity occurs when a speaker blatantly gives more or less
information than the situation requires. We have already seen one instance of a person giving
less information than required, in the example with the dog that has bitten the man. Here is a
similar one:
Source: Thomas, 1995:69
A: How are we getting there? B: Well, we’re getting there by Dave’s car.
B blatantly gives less information than A needs, thereby generating the implicature that, while
she and her friends have a lift arranged, A will not be travelling with them.
Which is/are the maxim(s) flouted and he implicatures generated in the following
example?
The speaker is Rupert Allason (author, M.P. and expert on the British
intelligence services). He is discussing the identity of the so-called ‘Fifth Man’:
It was either Graham Mitchell or Roger Hollis and I don’t think it was Roger
Hollis.
( Thomas, 1995:65)
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3.5.2. Flouts exploiting maxim of Quality
Flouts which exploit the maxim of Quality occur when the speaker says something which is
blatantly untrue.
Source, Thomas, 1995:55
Late on Christmas Eve 1993 an ambulance is sent to pick up a man who has
collapsed in Newcastle city centre. The man is drunk and vomits all over the
ambulanceman who goes to help him. The ambulanceman says:
‘Great, that’s really great! That’s made my Christmas!’
Here an implicature is generated by the speaker’s saying something which is patently false.
Which is/are the maxim(s) flouted and he implicatures generated in the following
example?
[Victor has been buried up to his neck in the back garden by an irate builder. His
wife, Margaret, comes out]
M: What are you doing?
V: I’m wallpapering the spare bedroom, what the hell do you think I’m
doing?
(One Foot in the Grave, BBC 12/11/96)
3.5.3. Flouts exploiting maxim of Relation
The maxim of Relation is exploited by making a response which is very obviously irrelevant
to the topic at hand.
Source: Thomas, 1995:70
Geoffrey is a vicar, trying hard to curry favour with his bishop. The speaker is
Susan, his wife, who couldn’t care less about the church or religion:
‘We were discussing the ordination of women. The bishop asked me what I
thought. Should women take the services? So long as it doesn’t have to be me, I
32
wanted to say, they can be taken by a trained gorilla. ‘Oh yes”, Geoffrey chips in
‘Susan’s all in favour. She’s keener than I am, aren’t you, darling?’. More
sprouts anybody? I said.
In this example, the bishop is likely to come to the conclusion that Susan is not interested in
the subject of women’s ordination and wishes to change the topic.
Which is/are the maxim(s) flouted and he implicatures generated in the following
example?
[A is working at a computer in one of the department’s lab when she experiences
The maxim of Manner is exploited when the response is very long, or when the negative is
used instead of the positive form of the verb.
Source: Thomas, 1995:71
This interaction occurred during a radio interview with an un-named official
from United States Embassy in Port-au-Prince Haiti:
Interviewer: Did the United States Government play any part in Duvalier’s
departure? Did they, for example, actively encourage him to
leave?
Official: I would not try to steer you away from that conclusion.
The official could simply have replied Yes. The actual response is extremely long-winded.
33
Which is/are the maxim(s) flouted and he implicatures generated in the following
example?
[This is part of the queen’s speech at the anniversary of her 40th year on the
throne. It had been a bad year for the queen - marital difficulties of her children,
the Windsor Palace had gone up in flames]
Queen: 1992 is not a year which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure.
Flouting the co-operative principle in order to make a point more forcefully also explains:
• metaphors (‘Queen Victoria was made of iron’)
• hyperbole (‘I’ve got millions of beers in my cellar’)
• irony and sarcasm (‘I love it when you sing out of key all the time’)
• humour (e.g. puns)
Imagine short dialogues in which the maxims are flouted and implicatures are
created.
3.5.5. Other ways of not observing the maxims:
Opting out, i.e refusing to answer, is another way of non-observing the maxims. Such an
example is Bill Clinton’s response to a journalist who was asking him about the Whitewater
affair, a scandal in which Bill and Hillary were involved. When the journalist asked the
question, Clinton took his microphone off, got out of his seat, told the journalist he’d had his
two questions and went off.
Suspending the (universality of) maxims
There are occasions/situations/cultures when it appears that there is no expectation that all the
maxims will be observed. Compare, for instance, an interrogation, where we would not expect
that the maxim of Quality should be observed by the defendants, with a confessional, where
we expect the opposite.
Infringing:
A speaker who with no intention of generating an implicature and with no intention of
deceiving, fails to observe a maxim is said to ‘infringe’ the maxim. For example, a speaker
34
may fail to observe a maxim because of imperfect linguistic performance (foreigners, young
child speaking, nervous speakers, etc.)
3.6. Summary
• Implicature (term devised by Grice) refers to the implied meaning
generated intentionally by the speaker. Infer, on the other hand, refers to
the situation in which the hearer deduces meaning from available
evidence. Inference is the inferred meaning deduced by the hearer, which
may or may not be the same as the speaker’s intended implicature.
• Grice’s co-operative principle: ‘Make your contribution such as is
required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or
direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged’.
• Maxim of quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is required
for the current purpose of the exchange. Do not make your contribution
more informative than is required.
• Maxim of quality: Do not say what you believe to be false; Do not say
that for which you lack evidence.
• Maxim of Relation: Be relevant
• Maxim of Manner: Avoid obscurity of expression; Avoid ambiguity; Be
brief; Be orderly.
Flouting the maxims generates implicatures
The situations which chiefly interested Grice were those in which a speaker
blatantly, deliberately, fails to observe a maxim, not with any intention of
deceiving or misleading, but because the speaker wants to prompt the hearer to
look for a meaning which is different from the expressed meaning.
3.7. End of UNIT TEST 1. Answer the following questions:
What is the difference between the verb to imply and the verb to infer?
35
What is the difference between ‘inference’ and ‘implicature’?
What is a conversational implicature?
Formulate Grice’s Cooperative Principle.
Which are the four maxims of the Cooperative Principle?
In what ways is knowledge about the Cooperative principle relevant to you?
2. Analyse the following extract in relation to the Co-operative Principle: [Context: a television serial, called ‘Boys from the Blackstuff’, follows the lives
of a group of men facing unemployment in Liverpool. This scene takes place in a
Department of Employment. Chrissie is under suspicion for illegally claiming
unemployment benefit.]
Clerk: It seems from your files, Mr. Todd, that one of our inspectors has visited
your house on two separate occasions during the past ten days without
receiving an answer.
Ch.: Ah, what a shame
C: You were out?
Ch: Looks that way doesn’t it?
C: Can you tell me where you were?
Ch: I might be able to if you tell me when you called.
C: It’s the...morning of Tuesday the third, and...the afternoon of Thursday
the 12th
[There is a pause]
Ch: Haven’t a clue.
C: Were you employed during those days?
Ch: Who, me?
C: Look, have you got a job, Mr. Todd?
Ch: Oh yeah, I just come here for the company and the pleasant surroundings.
C: (patiently, and not without sympathy) You haven’t answered my question.
Ch: [Looking away] I haven’t worked in over a year.
C: Right, Mr. Todd, that’s all.
(Chrissie stands)
C: We will, however, be making further visits to your house in due course.
Ch: I’ll bake a cake.
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UNIT FOUR: KNOWLEDGE IN DISCOURSE ___________________________________________________________________________ Contents:
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Competences
4.3. Knowledge structures
4.4. Relevance theory
4.5. Summary
4.6. End of unit test
4.1. Introduction The way in which we speak (or write) shows our assumptions about what the receiver already knows and about what he wants to find out. In this unit we will look more closely at the role of knowledge, and how it interacts with language to create discourse. You will also learn about Relevance theory, which seeks to answer the question of what is relevant for the hearer in the process of communication.
4.2. Competences On completion of UNIT FOUR students will be able to:
• get familiar with the concepts of knowledge structures, expectations, schema, and relevance;
• understand the role of knowledgte in communication • apply the concepts to the analysis of naturally occurring data
Study time for UNIT FOUR: 2 hours
37
Let’s remember
Remember that we have already seen how existing knowledge in the
receiver of a message and the correct assessment of the extent of that
knowledge by the sender are essential for successful communication. In
other words, the way in which we speak (or write) shows our assumptions
about what the receiver already knows and about what he wants to find
out.
4.3. Knowledge structures
The assumption about what the receiver already knows may be observed at all linguistic
levels, such as (cf. Cook, 1989):
• the use of articles, as in the example below where the use of indefinite article to
introduce new information may be interpreted as the speaker sharing with the hearer
the assumption that pineapples are edible, while tables, for instance, are not:
There was a pineapple on the table. I ate it.
• the structuring of information, as in the following example, where the focus on ‘John’
has a bearing on the syntactic structure of the sentence:
It was John who ate fish and chips.
• At the level of discourse and the function of utterances, as in the example below,
where the sergeant assumes that Jones has knowledge of the authority of sergeants, the
obligations of soldiers an the importance attached to clean boots on parades grounds:
S: Jones. Clean your boots.
Pr: No sergeant.
38
S: Jones, I order you to clean your boots.
Pr: No. sergeant.
S: Right, you’ve had it now. Trying to undermine my authority! You’re on a
charge!
Source: Cook, 1989
We will next look more closely at the role of knowledge, and how it interacts with language
to create discourse.
In order to function in the world, people cannot treat each new person, object, or event as
unique and separate. They can only make sense of the world by seeing connections between
things, and between present things and things we have experienced before or heard about.
These vital connections are learned as we grow up and live in a given culture. As soon as we
measure a new perception against what we know of the world from prior experience, we are
dealing with expectations.
A broad range of fields, including linguistics, have started to study the notion of expectations,
which lies at the root of much talk about such notions as frames, scripts and schemas in
linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, social psychology, sociology and
anthropology. Because of the large number of fields and writers, who have used different
notions in different contexts, confusion may result. That it why, I will here rely on two main
authors who come from different fields of investigation: Cognitive psychology
(Eysenck&Keane, 1990) and Discourse Analysis (Tannen, 1993), who had a contribution to
schema theory.
This theory was stimulated by findings in Cognitive psychology and Artificial Intelligence
(attempts to program computers to produce and understand discourse, namely, how pre-
existent knowledge of the world and language interact in order to reproduce the process in
computers).
According to Eysenck&Keane (1990:275), ‘ A schema is a structured cluster of concepts; it
usually involves generic knowledge and may be used to represent events, sequences of
events[...], situations, relations and even objects’.
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A schema consists of a particular configuration of variables or slots that may accept a range of
concepts. The concepts that fill slots are called values. Our knowledge of typical values/slots
constrains what may go into a slot. However, slots can be left unfilled or have an ‘assumed’ or
‘default’ value. Here is an example of a ‘restaurant schema’ that one may have in mind, which
includes physical surroundings, a certain sequence of the events, and certain people with
certain social relations. What you cannot see, when entering a restaurant, you assume. So you
fill in the missing slots by inferencing what else is there.
FRAME (physical surroundings) tables
room
chairs
SCRIPT (sequence of actions) ordering
payment
exiting
SOCIAL SCHEMATA (people) waiters
customers
manager
For some evidence of the existence of schemas, let’s look at a real life example. Here is what
a witness in a court case tells the court about her movements in the morning, when she is
asked to tell everything she did, the whole truth:
I woke up at seven forty. I made toast and a cup of tea. I listened to the news. And
I left for work at about 8.30.
Source: Cook, 1989
Try to fill in variables that you infer or assume to exist from your ‘Getting up in
the morning schema’, which have not been mentioned by the witness.
40
When a sender judges her receiver’s schema to correspond to a significant degree to her own,
she need only mention features which are not contained in it. Other features will be assumed
to be present by default, unless we are told otherwise. For example (Cook, 1989), compare:
I went to work in my pyjamas.
I went to work in my clothes.
The second utterance seems odd because we usually do not say that we go to work in our
clothes. This information is present by default, that is, we assume that all people go to work
dressed in their clothes. In the first example, however, the information about how I was
dressed becomes relevant, because it is something unusual, or new, presumably, for the
listener.
Schemas are stereotyped patterns which we retrieve from memory and employ in our
understanding of discourse. What you cannot see, you assume, you fill in slots by
inferencing/assuming. The mind, stimulated by key words or phrases in the text, activates a
knowledge schema (our expectations about objects, people and events).
Suggest a continuation for each of the following:
1. She’s one of those dumb, pretty Marilyn Monroe type blondes. She spends
hours looking after her nails. She polishes them every day and keeps them...
2. The king put his seal on the letter. It...
Now look at these continuations:
1...all neatly arranged in little jam jars in the cellar, graded according to length, on the shelf
above the hammers and the electric drills.
2....waggled it flippers, and caught a fish in its mouth.
The schema activated by the opening leads to one interpretation of ‘nails’ and ‘seal’ (This is
called expectation driven understanding in Artificial Intelligence). There is a conflict here
between the ease with which we process the information and our interest. Generally speaking,
activating a certain schema and then overturning it, as in the examples above, is a device often
used in jokes, puzzles, and literature.
41
Schema enables us to draw inferences. We are able to construct an interpretation, a
representation in memory that contains more than the information we receive. Schema may be
thought of as being in an inactive state in the mind until they are cued and thus made active.
Generally, one might suppose that only relevant schemas are activated, in other words, that fit
the incoming information. But these can be many. The question then arises: What is to stop
virtually every word in a text activating a schema? A plausible solution may be offered by the
Relevance Theory.
4.4. Relevance theory (D.Sperber & D.Wilson, Relevance. Communication and Cognition,
1986, Blacwell)
The Relevance theory tries to answer the question: What determines which schema gets
activated? In short, Relevance theorists Sperber and Wilson consider that human mind have a
long-term aim: to increase their knowledge of the world. In each encounter with discourse, we
start with a set of assumptions, whose accuracy we seek to improve.
Information is relevant when it has a significant effect on our assumptions, that is, when it
allows us to alter our knowledge structures to give us a more accurate representation of the
world.
On the other hand, successful communication must work within the framework of the
receiver’s existing knowledge; it must not make too many demands. So, relevant information
adjusts our picture of the world: it is information which yields the greatest change in our
knowledge for the least processing effort.
Relevance theory says:
a). Other things being equal, the greater the contextual effects, the greater the relevance.
b) Other things being equal, the smaller the processing effort, the greater the relevance.
(1986:29)
Let’s illustrate this, with a quotation taken from Sperber and Wilson (1986:269):
‘Mary wants to make it quite manifest to Peter that she will be out from 4 o’clock
42
to 6 o’clock. She might inform him of this by saying any of (10a-c):
(10) (a) I’ll be out from 4 to 6.
(b) I’ll be out at the Jones’s from 4 to 6.
(c) I’ll be out at the Jones’s from 4 to 6 to discuss the next meeting.
Suppose she assumes that any of these utterances would be relevant enough to
Peter. Suppose it doesn’t matter to her whether she tells him where she is going
and why. Suppose the amount of effort needed to produce any of these utterances
makes no difference to her. Then it would be rational to enough to utter any of
(10a-c), since each would achieve her goal at an equally acceptable cost to her.
However, it would be most rational to produce the utterance most relevant to
Peter, since this would make it most likely that he would attend to her
communication, remember it, and so on: in other words, it would maximize the
manifestness to Peter of the information that Mary wants him to have. Since
(10c) would demand more effort from Peter than (10b), and (10b) than (10a),
Mary should choose one of these longer utterances if and only if the extra
information conveyed yields enough effect to make it more relevant to Peter. If
he doesn’t care where she is going, she should choose (10a). If he cares where
she is going, but not why, she should choose (10b). If he cares both where and
why, she should choose (10c)...
Information is relevant to you if it interacts in a certain way with your existing assumptions
about the world. There are 3 types of interaction leading to contextual effects:
1) it produces new information
2) it strengthens our existing assumptions.
3) it contradicts and eliminates our existing assumptions.
A step forward in understanding how people can communicate successfully is to understand
that people approach the world not as naïve receptacles, but rather as experienced veterans of
perception who have stored their prior experiences as ‘organised mass’, and who see events
and objects in the world in relation to each other and in relation to their prior experiences.
43
This prior experience takes the form of expectations about the world, and in the vast majority
of cases, the world confirms these expectations.
However, miscommunication may occur in a number of situations, such as
• When there are misjudgments and mismatches of schema between the sender and the
receiver. These are particularly likely when people try to communicate across cultures
• Communication suffers when people make false assumptions about shared schemas
When one steps outside the predictable patterns (discourse deviation
4.5. Summary • the way in which we speak (or write) shows our assumptions about what
the receiver already knows and about what he wants to find out.
• existing knowledge in the receiver of a message and the correct
assessment of the extent of that knowledge by the sender are essential for
successful communication.
• ‘ A schema is a structured cluster of concepts; it usually involves generic
knowledge and may be used to represent events, sequences of events[...],
situations, relations and even objects’.
• A schema consists of a particular configuration of variables or slots that
may accept a range of concepts. The concepts that fill slots are called
values. Our knowledge of typical values/slots constrains what may go into
a slot. However, slots can be left unfilled or have an ‘assumed’ or
‘default’ value.
• Schemas are stereotyped patterns which we retrieve from memory and
employ in our understanding of discourse. What you cannot see, you
assume, you fill in slots by inferencing/assuming. The mind, stimulated
by key words or phrases in the text, activates a knowledge schema (our
expectations about objects, people and events).
• The Relevance theory tries to answer the question: What determines
which schema gets activated?
Relevance theory says:
a). Other things being equal, the greater the contextual effects, the greater the
44
relevance.
b) Other things being equal, the smaller the processing effort, the greater the
relevance. (1986:29)
Miscommunication may occur in a number of situations, such as
• When there are misjudgments and mismatches of schema between the sender
and the receiver. These are particularly likely when people try to communicate
across cultures
• Communication suffers when people make false assumptions about shared
schemas
4.6. End of UNIT TEST 1. Compare the following two texts. Do either of them sound peculiar, and if
so why?
a) ‘Have you heard about Peter and Susan’s wedding? Well, apparently the
minister was late, the best man lost the rings and the cake tasted pretty awful. A
complete disaster!’
b) ‘Have you heard about Peter and Susan’s wedding? Well, apparently a
minister was late, a best man lost some rings and a cake tasted pretty awful. A
complete disaster!’
2. What is odd about the following story?
What does it tell you about the schema you employed in interpreting the
discourse?
A father was driving his son home when he had a crash. The father was killed
and the son rushed by ambulance to hospital. As the boy was being prepared for
an emergency operation, the surgeon walked in, looked at him and cried; ‘I can’t
operate on this boy: he’s my son!’
3. Comment on the following dialogue thinking of persons involved, social
45
roles, group membership (Gender, age), Frame, Script:
A Sanatogen radio advert
Voice A: [Singing to loud disco music]. There I was looking for you luv,
couldn’t get enough...ooh, ooh...yeah-eah, stop...
Voice B: [Two loud thumps as if on a door. Speaking above music] Turn
that racket down, now! Do you hear me! Now, I said!
Voice A: [Singing to the music]...right now....
Voice B: What did you say? How dare you speak to me like that! Honestly
Mum, I don’t know what’s got into you lately.
Voice-over: Sanatogen Classic 50 Plus [etc.].
46
UNIT FIVE: TWO APPROACHES TO CONTEXT ___________________________________________________________________________ Contents:
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Competences
5.3. Issues of context
5.3.1. From speech acts to conversation (co-text)
5.3.2. Society and context (social context)
5.3.3. Society and discourse
5.4. Two approaches to context
5.4.1. The ethnographic approach
5.4.2. The pragmatic approach
5.5. Summary
5.6. End of unit test
5.1. Introduction According to Mey (1993:181), a truly pragmatic view on language cannot, and should not, restrict itself to such micropragmatic issues of context as deixis, speech acts and implicit meaning. Pragmaticians have turned, instead, to the study of chunks of linguistic interactions, usually conversations of various types and to a ‘macropragmatic’ view of context. This unit deals with two view on context: Del Hymes’ sociolinguistic approach and Levinson’s pragmatic approach to context.
5.2. Competences On completion of UNIT FOUR students will be able to:
• get familiar with different definitions of context • identify socilinguistic and pragmatic features of context • apply the concepts to the analysis of naturally occurring data • use language appropriately, depending on the context
Study time for UNIT FIVE: 2 hours
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5.3. Issues of context
The term ‘context’ apparently has a limitless range of potentially relevant objects, and
‘context’ seems to be a vague notion. However, we can understand the concept looking at it in
an extensional way, i.e. enlarging the scope of the units we are looking at: rather than
examining isolated sentences or utterances, we consider those same utterances placed in the
contexts in which they belong. According to Mey (1993:182), this can be understood in two
ways:
• either as extending the individual utterances making up the text, and this is what he calls
the co-text;
• or, alternatively, considering those utterances in their natural ‘habitat’. In this case we are
dealing with the larger context in which people use language.
According to Mey (1993:184-188), there are different understandings of the notion of context,
from a more limited one, to macro issues of context.
5.3.1. From speech acts to conversation (co-text)
Speech acts normally and naturally occur in interchanges between two or several
conversationalists. Such a context should not be restricted to what, technically speaking, is a
co-text. It will not only have to go beyond the individual speech act, but beyond the two-
utterance interchange (A says something to which B replies), which is the framework of
speech act theorists.
Let’s remember
Remember from last semester’s unit on Conversation Analysis that in the
framework of Conversation analysis (CA), the various mechanisms determining
people’s use of language in an extended, open conversational setting, are
explored:
• Who holds the right to speak (the ‘floor’);
• What kinds of rules are there for either yielding or holding on to the floor;
• What makes a particular point in the conversation particularly appropriate for
a ‘turn’ (one speaker leaving the floor, another taking it);
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Though Conversation Analysis have got a wealth of insights into these matters and have
elaborated an impressive arsenal of techniques for the description and explanation of the
mechanisms of conversation, it leaves out the larger context in the sense given above. In
particular, the social aspects of the extended context have no place in such a framework (e.g.
they are not interested in issues of social status, gender, age, etc. of the participants).
5.3.2. Society and context (social context)
Linguistic behaviour is social behaviour. People talk because they want to socialise, in the
widest possible sense of the word: either for fun, or for some serious purposes, such as closing
a deal, solving a problem. This basic fact implies two other basic facts:
• one, that we have to look at what people really say when they are together
• that any understanding that linguists can hope to obtain of what goes on between people
using language is based on a correct understanding of the whole context in which the
linguistic interaction takes place.
The following example and analysis have been taken from Mey, (1993:186). On the face of it
the following conversation is pretty strange:
A: I have a fourteen year old son
B: Well that’s all right
A: I also have a dog
B: oh I’m sorry
It makes no sense at all unless we know what the larger (societal) context is: A is trying to
lease a flat, and mentions the fact that he has a child. The landlord doesn’t mind children, but
when he hears about the dog, he indicates that A’s prospects as a future lease-holder are rather
dim. Now, the question can be asked, what exactly the landlord is sorry about. It is clearly not
the fact that A has a dog. Rather it has something to do with the fact that regulations for the
block of flats do not allow tenants to have pets. So, the landlord is either sorry for A if A has
to give up the dog, or for himself (if A looks like a good future tenant) in case A renouncing
getting a lease.
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5.3.3. Society and discourse
The social context naturally presupposes the existence of a particular society, with implicit
and explicit values, norms, rules and laws, and with its particular conditions of life.
The term ‘discourse’ is used in this section to indicate not only the social occasion in which
the linguistic interaction takes place (e.g. job interview, medical consultation, conversation,
etc.), but also how people use the language in their respective social contexts.
Discourse is different from ‘text’, in that it embodies more than just the text understood as a
collection of sentences. It is also different from conversation. Conversation is one particular
type of text, governed by special rules. Thus, while it is natural to use the term ‘discourse’
specifically in connection with conversation, discourse and conversation are not the same.
Let’s look at the following case to show the difference between a discourse-oriented approach
and one that is exclusively based on speech acts (example and analysis taken from Mey,
1993:187)
A: I bet you $500 that Swale will win the race.
B: Oh?
In this conversation some speech act linguists will claim that A has performed a speech act of
betting, just by uttering the words ‘I bet’. Yet, in another, equally valid, pragmatic and
discourse-oriented sense, he has not: B has not ‘risen to the bet’, by uttering for example
‘you’re on’. Instead, B utters a non-committal ‘Oh’. Consequently, there has been no
‘uptake’, because one of the felicity conditions has not been fulfilled, and so there has been no
bet.
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5.4. Two approaches to context
We will further look at two approaches that offer specific criteria or features of context that
may help the analyst in describing the context and what is going on in interactions.
5.4.1. The ethnographic approach
The sociolinguist Dell Hymes (1964) puts forward a useful acronym, i.e SPEAKING, to cover
the factors that must be taken into account when trying to describe what happens when people
use language:
S= the Setting and Scene of the exchange; the setting refers to the concrete physical
circumstance in which speech takes place, e.g. courtrooms, classrooms, telephone
conversations, passing acquaintances in the street, etc. The scene refers to the
psychological and cultural circumstances of the speech situation, e.g. consulting,
pleading, conferring. The settings and scenes do not necessarily remain constant
throughout a particular language exchange, although it appears to be easier to shift
scenes than to shift settings, e.g. a speaker’s attempt to tell a joke to dispel a tense
atmosphere.
P= the Participants may be of various kinds and may be referred to as Speaker, Hearer
and audience, or Addressor, Addressee.
E= Ends, i.e. the conventionally recognised and expected outcomes of an exchange as
well as the personal goals that each of the P seeks to accomplish. Some speech events
have conventional outcomes, e.g. ‘diagnosis’, ‘verdict’.
A= Act sequence, i.e the actual language forms that are used, how these are used. It refers
to message for, i.e. topics of conversation and particular ‘ways of speaking’. In a given
culture, certain linguistic forms are conventional for certain types of talk.
K= Keys refers to the tone, manner in which a particular message is conveyed, e.g. light-
hearted, serious, precise, etc.
I= Instrumentalities, i.e, the choice of channel: oral/written, general/specialised language,
formal/informal
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N= Norms of interpretation, i.e.interpretation which would normally be expected for the
speech event in question; norms of interaction, interpretation in relation to the
conventions of the conversation (e.g. who usually talks, for how long)
G= the Genre that has to be recognised, e.g. novels, poems, lecture, advertisement, etc.
Take a Romanian wedding ceremony as a speech event and describe it in terms of
the SPEAKING grid.
Strengths and limitations of the Ethnographic Approach
Dealing with rituals, ethnography seems very good in that it makes conscious the unconscious
rules of our society. But even here it does leave some problems, especially the question: from
whose angle are we describing things? It cannot, however, explain the many variations in
performance in less ritualistic situations. Moreover, it does not enable us to explain why it is
that one person performs very differently from another in the ‘same’ linguistic situation (for
example, why one person emerges form a job interview having succeeded in gaining the job,
while another does not).
5.4.2. The pragmatic approach
A possible way forward is suggested by Levinson’s notion of activity type. He defines an
activity type as:
…a fuzzy category whose focal members are goal-defined, socially constituted,
bounded, events with constraints on participants, setting, and soon, but above all on
the kinds of allowable contributions. Paradigm examples would be teaching, a job
interview, a jural interrogation, a football game, a task in a workshop, a dinner party
and so on.
Because of the strict constraints on contributions to any particular activity, there are
corresponding strong expectations about the functions that any utterance at a certain
point in the proceedings can be fulfilling’[…] Activity types help to determine how
one says will be ‘taken’ – that is, what kinds of inferences will be made from what is
said.’ (Levinson, 1992:69).
52
The difference between a speech event approach and an activity type approach is that the
former has an outside view on context, whereas the latter looks at how language shapes the
event.
Thomas (1995:187-194, slightly adapted) provides a very useful checklist, which will help us
describe an activity type:
The goals of the participants: notice that we are talking about the goals of the individuals
rather than the goals of the whole speech event. The goals of one participant may be different
from those of another. For example, the goal of a trial is to come up with a fair verdict, but the
goals of the prosecution lawyer (to get a verdict ‘guilty’) are diametrically opposed to those of
the defense lawyer and the defendant. An individual’s goals may also change during the
course of an interaction.
Allowable contributions: some interactions are characterised by social or legal constraints on
what the participants may say. For example, in courts of law the prosecution is not allowed to
refer to a defendant’s previous convictions; in the British House of Commons members may
not use certain abusive terms. What is pragmatically interesting is the way in which people
will work round these restrictions. Coulthard (1989), for example, relates how one
prosecution lawyer was able to indicate that the defendant had previous convictions by
referring to the circumstances in which the defendant had injured his foot (it had been broken
during a burglary); Churchill (prohibited from calling an opponent a ‘liar’), famously came up
with the phrase ‘guilty of a terminological inexactitude’.
The degree to which Gricean maxims are adhered to or suspended: the expectation of the
way in which the maxims will be observed varies considerably from culture to culture and
from activity type to activity type (e.g. in Parliament, in media interviews with politicians, or
in the law courts), there is a very low expectation that what is said (or implied) will be the
whole truth; in other activity types (such as going to a Confession) the expectation that the
speaker will tell the whole truth is extremely high. Some inferences can only be drawn in
relation to the activity type. For example, the actor Nigel Hawthorne, talking about
unsuccessful plays he had been in before he became famous, said:
53
‘Friends would come backstage and talk about the weather’.
The irrelevance of the friends’ comments can only be judged in relation to an activity type in
which there was a powerful expectation that they would congratulate Hawthorne on the
excellence of his performance.
Turn-taking and topic control: to what degree can an indvidual exploit turn-taking norms in
order to control an interaction, establish his or her own agenda (topic of conversation), etc.
Prepare a role-play of a job interview as an activity-type.
Language is not simply a reflection of the physical or social context, but language is used in
order to establish and then change the nature of the relationship between A and B and the
nature of the activity type in which they are participating.. In other words, context cannot be
seen only as ‘given’, as something imposed from outside. The participants, by their use of
language, also contribute to making and changing their context.
5.5. Summary Context may be seen:
• either as extending the individual utterances making up the text = co-text;
• or, alternatively considering those utterances in their natural ‘habitat’. In this
case we are dealing with the larger context in which people use language.
An ethnographic approach (Dell Hymes)
S= the Setting and Scene of the exchange;
P= the Participants;
E= Ends;
A= Act sequence;
K= Keys;
I= Instrumentalities;
54
N= Norms of interpretation;
G= the Genre
The activity-type approach (Levinson)
Factors that contribute to characterizing a certain activity type
• The goals of the participants;
• Allowable contributions;
• The degree to which Gricean maxims are adhered to or suspended;
• Turn-taking and topic control;
5.6. End of UNIT TEST
Analyse the following two excerpts, both taken from the same speech event – a
PhD supervision to observe the choices made by participants, at a linguistic level,
in order to systematically reduce the social distance between A and B,
emphasising common ground and shared values. Look specifically at phonetics,
syntax, vocabulary, turn-taking (how it is distributed between the two
participants):
In the two examples (taken from Thomas, 1995:192-193) speaker A is a male
academic, speaker B a female research student. They have known each other for
several years and are good friends. The interaction took place in A’s office and
the two examples occurred within a few minutes of one another. The symbol / is
used to indicate overlapping speech.
Extract 1
A: That’s right. But then, there’s a difference between that and what your um
ultimate sort of social if you like purpose or objective is in the encounter.
Okay? Now, would there be…would there be a further subdivision…I
mean that’s a question, would there be a further subdivision between, as it
were tactical goal-sharing and long-term goal-sharing and would the
tactical goal-sharing be equivalent to what we’re calling ‘observance of
the conventions of the language game’ or not? Because it did seem to me
55
when I was reading this that I could see the difference you were drawing
between linguistic cooperation and goal-sharing but I wondered whether
there wasn’t a further sub-division within goal-sharing between the
tactical and the strategic?
B: Okay well/
A: /and that the ‘tactical’ might be…might be in harmony with
‘observance of the conventions of the language game’ but might not,
actually.
B: Well um er um what I was trying to get at here was why so many
otherwise intelligent people have completely and utterly rejected Grice
and they have and it seems to me that why they’ve done it is because they
do not see man as a fundamentally cooperative animal. Now…
Extract 2
A: Oh, e’s back is’e? From Columbia?
B: Mm and I snapped off his fl…you know how I fidget when I’m nervous
and there was this ‘orrible looking thing and I thought it was a spider on
the end of a cobweb and I snapped it off and apparently he’d been
nurturing it in his breast for about two years.
A: What was it?
B: I don’t know. Some silly plant but he was obviously/
A: /our plants got nicked.
B: Really?
A: In the last week yeah we’ve had all our plants knocked off.
B: What where from?
A: Here.
B: Really?
A: Must’ve been stolen from here and the Institute and the Literature
56
Department.
B: How strange. Oh and a bird shat on my head and then/
A: /I thought that was good luck!
B: Yes. You wouldn’t’ve if it had happened to you. And and I thought all
that remains is for me drawers to fall down and my happiness is complete.
Well the lecture went very well indeed and er there was him there was a
man called somebody or other Charles or Charles somebody.
A: Chalr…No. I don’t know him.
B: And he said he’s got a good friend in Finland and apparently she heard
this lecture I gave over there. She’s doing her bloody PhD on it.
A: Is she?
B: Yeah. On pragmatic failure. Anyway.
A: Anyway, it went all right?
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UNIT SIX: ACTIVITY TYPES: INTERCULTURAL GATEKEEPING ENCOUNTERS ___________________________________________________________________________ Contents:
6.1. Introduction
6.2. Competences
6.3. Gatekeeping encounters
6.4. Selection interviews as activity types
6.5. Activity-type mismatches
6.5.1. The case of dispreferred answers
6.5.2. Sources of activity-type mismatches
6.6. Summary
6.7. End of unit test
6.1. Introduction In this teaching unit we shall look at ‘gatekeeping encounters’, more specifically
‘selection interviews’ as activity types. The focus will be practical, starting with
the identification of some features of selection interviews as an activity type, with
the aim of exemplifying troubles in the interaction between participants coming
from different cultural backgrounds. It is based on research that has been done and
is being done on institutional interaction.
6.2. Competences On completion of UNIT FIVE students will be able to:
• get familiar with the concept of gatekeeping encounters • get familiar with empirical research on intercultural gatekeeping encounters• know the features of job/selection interviews • practise job/selection interviews
Study time for UNIT SIX: 2 hours
58
6. 3. Gatekeeping encounters
Gatekeeping encounter is a term that has been first used by Erickson and Shultz (1982) in
their research on counseling interviews in academic advising. Gatekeepers have been
identified as individuals who have been given the authority to make decisions on the behalf of
institutions that will affect the mobility of others. Examples of gatekeeping encounters are:
• Job interviews
• Legal trials
• Counselling sessions
• Selection interviews (interviews involving the selection of applicants for training courses)
Because gatekeeping encounters have been seen as critical for the institution in controlling
access and mobility and critical for the individual in determining major aspects of life
experience, many institutional and legal constraints have been placed on their operation.
These encounters are designed to be as objective as possible.
However, most of the studies of intercultural gatekeeping encounters have shown that
differences in expectations about the event (the structure of the activity type) may result in
negative outcome for the applicant.
6.4. Selection interviews as activity types
A selection interview can be analysed as an ‘activity type’ with specific norms and role-
relationships which are different from those of, say, casual conversation. Here are some
‘typical’ characteristic features of selection interviews, according to Verschueren (1999:153)
• The interlocutors are typically one interviewee and one or more interviewers. The goal of
selection interviews is to assess the candidates’ potential for the training course on the
basis of educational qualifications and previous work experience. The interviewer’s
questions therefore focus on two specific things: background information about the
applicant’s education and work experience, and his/her motivation for applying for the
course
59
• The interviewee comes to the interview with the intention to present him/herself in such a
way as to maximise chances of being selected. The interviewer’s goal is to elicit the
information needed to take the decision
• One of the central features is their scheduled nature: interviews, unlike casual
conversation, are arranged at certain times and places and the interviewers come to the
interview with a pre-set agenda
• The social context is asymmetrical, with an amount of power on the part of the
interviewer, i.e. the interviewer legitimately establishing a ‘right-to-know’ persona,
whereas the interviewee displays his or her abilities for judgement. In interethnic contexts,
aspects of cultural background may enter the picture as well.
• Different types of temporal references are involved depending on the topical segment of
the interview. There is usually some talk about past events in the candidate’s educational
background, and an exploration of skills and attitudes.
• The positioning of the interlocutors in physical space is typically face-to-face. The
interviewee’s physical appearance, gestures and gaze are carefully monitored.
Given that one of the goals of such interviews is to assess the suitability of the candidates for
the course applied for, it follows that the interviewers’ questions and the interviewees’
answers should appear ‘acceptable’ both in terms of content and the manner in which they are
presented.
6.5. Activity-type mismatches
In intercultural selection interview context interviewees are likely to face two major obstacles:
first, a lack of knowledge of the rules and procedures of the activity type; secondly a lack of
adequate linguistic knowledge (which will not be discussed here). We shall next look at the
case of ‘dispreferred answers’ in selection interviews.
6.5.1. The case of dispreferred answers
This section is based on research done by Sarangi (1994) on intercultural selection interviews.
In the case of selection interviews, the interviewer’s questions have to be provided with
preferred answers in order that the interviewee would stand a fair chance of being successful.
60
For example, the expected, or preferred answer to the typical question like ‘Why do you want
to join this course?’, would be for the interviewee to talk enthusiastically about the course
applied for, but with a certain amount of modesty. If the expectations of the interviewer about
the acceptable answer do not match the interviewee’s expectations we can talk about activity-
type mismatches
In the following example, the Asian interviewee gives a ‘dispreferred response (I stands for
the interviewer and J for Jalal, the Asian interviewee):
I: right, Jalal you’ve applied for eh an electrical course
J: yes
I: could you tell me why?
J: mhm because I came from Pakistan one year ago and I don’t know any other
job about in England. I want some training and I choose for electrician because I
went sometime in Pakistan with my friend for wiring for little time
(from Sarangi, 1994: ‘Mismatches in intercultural selection interviews’)
The answer provides no particular commitment on the candidate’s part (‘I don’t know any job
about in England’) and no reference to past experience as a strength (‘because I went
sometime in Pakistan…’). However, both statements appear to be ‘true’ and ‘correct’.
The question is how do we, as analysts, detect the occurrence of ‘dispreferred’ responses in
these interview situations? If we adopt a perspective of how the activity type of interview is
structured, we can assume that the simple factual questions give way to a series of other
questions designed to discover the underlying ability of the applicant for the course (job).
A possible guide is the interviewer’s reaction. For example, the interviewer changes or
abandons the topic to signal the dispreferred answer.
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I: can you remember anything you did in physics is there anything that you
can remember electrical wires did you wire bulbs [unclear]
J: no [laughs] ten years ago I forgot everything
I: you’ve forgotten, I see, not likely to remember anything about it, yeah,
fair enough, let me see I won’t question any longer with that erm do you
read anything eh like do you
J: yes yes
I: what sort of magazines you read
J: sometimes the telegraph
I: do you buy books on electric on electrical work?
J: no I don’t.
(Sarangi, 1994)
If Jalal were to be admitted into an engineering course, he would need not only to have some
background in physics but also to display some knowledge of physics. Jalal’s response can be
seen as dispreferred, although honest and true. The interviewer drops the topic but
immediately afterwards introduces a topic about Jalal’s current reading habits, which is also
geared at finding out the interviewee’s commitment to gaining knowledge in the field of
physics. Once again Jalal misinterprets this question and provides information about his
general reading habits.
Another clue for detecting dispreferred answers on the part of the interviewee is that
interviewers may reformulate the initial question to force the interviewee to expand or
clarify the previous response until it passes as ‘satisfactory’. I stands for the interviewer and R
for the candidate.
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I: yes, you’re applying for a course as a motor mechanic
R: yes I I like it
I: yes why do you want to be a motor mechanic
R: eh because I interested with it and eh I like it to learn motor mechanic
I: why?
R: why I say because I interest that’s why I learn it
I: erm do you know what a motoc mechanic does?
R: yes something I know something I like to learn some more
I: uhm yes tell me what a motor mechanic does
(Sarangi, 1994)
This is another case of activity-type-specific mismatch, because in selection interview context
R’s response is ‘unacceptable’. For R., the fact that he is interested in this particular course is
an adequate response. But from the interviewer’s point of view, R’s interest in a motor
mechanics course is ‘given information’, as he has applied for one. The interviewee’s minimal
response (‘yes I like it’) is therefore followed by the interviewer’s extended questioning. R’s
response, taken cumulatively, - ‘I interested with it’, ‘I like it to learn’, ‘I know something I
like to learn some more’ – is regarded by the interviewer as inadequate, as R has failed to
calculate the inference implied by the question. On R’s part, he may have felt that a sensible
answer would have been possible if the purpose of the question was made explicit, as for
example, ‘what is the job of a motor mechanic?’
The above examples show how interviewers’ questions can be indirect and inexplicit with a
hidden agenda, thus offering no clue, initially as to what would count as ‘preferred’ response.
A candidate who routinely participates in the ‘interview game’ may be able to distinguish
between what is asked and what is intended and thus focus on the interviewer’s intended
question.
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6.5.2. Sources of activity-type-specific mismatches
A further question that we could ask is ‘What are the potential sources which cause these
mismatches?” Here are some possible classifications of sources (cf. Sarangi, 1994):
1. Lack of knowledge of the interview agenda
Given that selection interview is a highly structured event, the range of topics to be covered is
normally pre-defined by the interviewer. An interviewee with a reasonable experience of
attending interviews will always expect a long march of questions, which are, normally,
basically the same kinds of questions. The inexperienced interviewee, however, may lack
knowledge about the potential agenda. For example, they may encounter difficulties if
unexpected questions are asked.
2. Lack of awareness of speaker rights
Selection interviews are characterised by what might be called an ‘unequal distribution of
speaker rights’ to carry out actions such as initiate topic, interrupt, etc. The unequal
distribution of speaker rights becomes apparent in the interviewer’s questioning, which
regulates the interviewee’s answer. Question and answers may also appear in a casual
conversation, but the difference is that in casual conversations there is no necessity for one
participant to remain a questioner and the other the answerer. An example of awareness of the
speaker rights is when a candidate is not aware that he may ask questions at the end of the
interview.
3. Slippage from one ‘activity type’ to another
Analysts agree that there is a distinction between all types of interview and casual
conversation, with the interview lying at the formal end of the speech continuum. In this
regard, some of the mismatches can be accounted for as attempts to slip into other, more
informal, modes of talk. For instance, the interviewee may provide a response which may be
perfectly acceptable in a casual conversation but inappropriate in the interview context.
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I: do you know what wage a motor mechanic could earn?
R: [pause] no I don’t know about this
I: how much money would you need?
R: I need a lot of money [laughs]
I: motor mechanics don’t earn a lot of money
R: eh I know but I interested with it
(Sarangi, 1994)
The question about wages recurs as a fairly common theme in these interviews. The
‘preferred’ answer in this respect would be the candidate’s awareness of the exact amount
he/she will be paid if successful. R. seems to have no idea, but he chooses to provide a light-
hearted response. The interviewer does not share his laughter, but, instead, shows irritation at
R’s reply. As a result, the interview at this point appears to be ‘conversational’.
An alternative explanatory framework is offered by Gumperz, and is called the ‘discourse
strategy’ framework. Gumperz refers to the notion of ‘discoruse strategy’ to different
‘contextualisation cues’ and ‘sociocultural knowledge’, which are learned in previous
interactive experiences. He claims that mismatches in intercultural job interviews can be
explained because of:
• Different cultural assumptions
• Different ways of structuring information
• Different ways of speaking
For example, in the following example SN, an Asian, is being interviewed for a librarian
position by a panel of three British interviewers. At this point in the interview NS is asked a
‘typical’ question about duties in his present job:
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I: you say you’re very busy in your present job, what exactly do you do, I
mean what are your duties day by day?
SN: well, we’ve to receive the visitors, show them around and then we have to
go out er to the factories you know, sometimes to attend the classes, how
to do er cataloguing classification
(Gumperz, 1984)
The interviewer’s question has a two-fold function, but SN chooses to focus on one aspect –
‘what exactly do you do’-, although he moves to answer the second question (what are your
duties day by day) rather marginally. This raises the question whether SN’s reply is ‘relevant’
or ‘satisfactory’ from the interviewer’s point of view. (Note that the interviewer’s question is
a conflation of two different questions).
According to Gumperz, SN’s answer moves from general, irrelevant information, to more
specific, relevant information. This is a clear indication of Asian’s speakers’ different ways of
structuring an argument. Gumperz argues that, at a rhetorical level, it is a characteristic for
Asian speakers to begin a response in a general way since a more direct answer is considered
by them to be rather impolite. In other words, here is a case of Asian speakers’ ‘different ways
of structuring information’, and an example of the clash between two conflicting norms: the
British interviewer preferring a ‘direct and relevant answer’ and the Asian interviewee opting
for an ‘indirect and polite’ response.
From the above data it emerges that the ‘activity-type’ allows us to be quite precise in
identifying sources of mismatch in intercultural selection interviews. However, Levinson’s
framework puts the responsibility for the mismatch with the speaker who deviates and thus
encourages analysts to cast mismatches in terms of ‘ignorance’ of the ‘rules of the game’.
Gumperz’s alternative framework seems to be more culturally sensitive.
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Analyse the following transcripts from selection interviews taken by two Native
speakers of English (NS1 and NS2) two Romanian interviewers (RI1, RI2), to
Romanian candidates (RC) for a post graduate course on social work. (source:
Coposescu, PhD thesis). You may want to look specifically for dispreferred
answers and sources of activity-type mismatches:
I.
→ NS1: had you expected, if you got a place on this course that you go abroad, for
practice? on placement? are you familiar…?
RC3: if I like to go?
NS3: mhm
RC3: yes.(laughs) of course I’d like.
NS1: and er are you happy with your English?
RC3: not so happy because
for three years, for almost three years I didn’t practice and I feel it.
→ NS1: so what would you do…
RC3: at the university and at the faculty I had English courses.
NS1: and and how would you bring it up to a standard if it were necessary?
RC3: if I were in this kind of situation?
RI2: how would you improve your English?
RC3: improve my English?
I think my English will be improved through the discussions,
I’ll be more motivated er to to learn at home. I have some books.
NS1: if if it wasn’t possible to offer you a place this year, on this particular course,
what would you do?
RC3: if I don’t get a place on this course, what I will do?
about what? (laughs)
what can I do?
NS1: if if we said unfortunately we cannot offer you a place //this year
RC3: //ah, then what?
NS1: yes, what would you do then?
RI1: no
RI2: no if
NS1: if if if if
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RC3: yes, I understand
RI2: nobody knows yet.
RC3: I would work, maybe I’ll try next year.
NS1: yes, yes
RC3: I tried once to a master course in Cluj, I cum se spune a pica?
II.
RI2: how do you think you’ll manage
from the time point of view
to do social service?
RC3: from my time? I understand that the course will be up to a year,
RI2: you work only er eight hours? start with eight until four?
RC3: I don’t understand
RI2: you have always only eight hours work ?
RC3: yes.
RI2: not more?
RC3: sometimes, now I I have to…
RI1: you have any financial support?
III
NS2: if you were the mayor of Brasov,
RC5: if I were …?
NS2: the mayor of Brasov,
RC5: ah, yes.
NS2: if you had all the money that you needed
RC5: (laughing) I don’t know if that’s possible
IV.
NS1: ok. just one more question. er
what you’re doing now in the social system.
what what do you actually do
that is what is your work ?
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RC3: yes. our er serviciu cum se spune?
RI1: office
RC3: our office. I work in the office,
NS1: you said you had your office
RC3: we’re six,
we’re six people who are working in this institution in this department.
er in an office
NS1: in an office, yes.
RC3: I I have to to to make an assessment about the institution,
to give a situation, er at the client,
to find er to, with the client, solutions
and er third, to try to prevent children (unclear) in these institutions.
NS1: but your primary goal,
RC3: primary goal, yes,
to to keep the children in a family, or to put them into other families.
NS1: and you do that through counseling and
RC3: yes yes through counseling er we can er not too much,
we can support them in a way.
NS1: yes, yes, yes
RC3: to support with clothes and er to get (unclear)
NS1: ah that’s fine. yes, thank you very much. E?
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6.6. Summary Gatekeeping encounters have been identified as individuals who have been given
the authority to make decisions on the behalf of institutions that will affect the
mobility of others.
Typical features of selection interviews as ‘activity types’:
• The goal of selection interviews is to assess the candidates’ potential for the
training course on the basis of educational qualifications and previous work
experience.
• The interviewee’s goal is to present him/herself in such a way as to maximise
chances of being selected. The interviewer’s goal is to elicit the information
needed to take the decision
• The social context is asymmetrical, with an amount of power on the part of
the interviewer.
• Sources of activity-type mismatches in intercultural selection interviews:
a. Lack of knowledge of the interview agenda
b. Lack of awareness of speaker rights
c. Slippage from one ‘activity type’ to another
6.7. End of UNIT TEST
1. Answer the following questions:
What is a gatekeeping encounter?
Which are the characteristic features of job interviews according to Verschueren?
Which are the problems that interviewees may encounter in intercultural job
interviews?
How can analysts identify ‘dispreferred’ answers of interviewees?
In what ways is knowledge about gatekeeping encounters relevant to you?
2. Describe your expectations for the activity type of a job interview in Romania
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___________________________________________________________________________ UNIT SEVEN: TALK IN INSTITUTIONAL SETTINGS ___________________________________________________________________________ Contents:
7.1. Introduction
7.2. Competences
7.3. The comparative approach
7.4. Formal institutions and question-answer sequences
7.5. Non formal institutions
7.5.1. Aspects of asymmetry
7.5.2. Asymmetry and power
7.6. Summary
7.7. End of unit test
7.1. Introduction Institutional talk is centrally and actively involved in the accomplishment of the
‘institutional’ nature of institutions themselves. Conversation Analysis has
developed a distinctive means of locating participants’ displayed orientations to
the institutional contexts. This is done by adopting a broadly comparative
perspective in which the turn-taking system for mundane conversation is treated as
the benchmark against which other forms of talk-in-interaction can be
distinguished.
7.2. Competences On completion of UNIT SIX students will be able to:
• understand the concept of institutional talk • identify elements that constitute institutional talk • apply the concept to the analysis of talk-in-interaction • use the language appropriately to different institutional contexts
Study time for UNIT SEVEN: 2 hours
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7.3. The comparative approach
Conversation Analysis has developed a distinctive means of locating participants’ displayed
orientations to the institutional contexts. This is done by adopting a broadly comparative
perspective in which the turn-taking system for mundane conversation is treated as the
benchmark against which other forms of talk-in-interaction can be distinguished.
Let’s remember
In its most basic sense, CA is the study of talk. More particularly, it is ‘the
systematic analysis of the talk produced in everyday situations of human
interaction: talk-in-interaction’ (Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998).
Conversation as a discourse type has been defined by Cook (1989) in the
following way:
1. It is not primarily necessitated by a practical task.
2. Any unequal power of participants is partially suspended.
3. The number of participants is small.
4. Turns are quite short.
5. Talk is primarily for the participants and not for an outside audience.
Although the field has adopted the name ‘conversation analysis’, practitioners do
not engage solely in the analysis of everyday conversations. The range of forms
of talk-in-interaction that have been the subject to study within CA is far larger
than the term ‘conversation’ alone would imply.
Two basic types of institutions have been defined (cf. Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998). They are
described as:
1) formal types – represented by courts of law, many kinds of interview, especially the
broadcast news interviews, but also some job interviews, some traditional or teacher-led
styles of classroom teaching, and most forms of ceremonial occasions.
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2) non-formal types – include more loosely structured, but still task-oriented,
lay/professional encounters, such as: counselling sessions, various kinds of social work
encounters, business meetings, service encounters in places such as shops, radio phone-in
conversations.
7.4. Formal institutions and question-answer sequences
According to Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998), the distinctiveness of formal types of institutional
settings is based on the close relationship between participants’ social roles and the forms of
talk in which they engage. Studies of formal settings have focused on the ways in which
participants orient to a strict turn-taking format called turn-type pre-allocation. It means that
participants, on entering the setting, are normatively constrained in the types of turns they
may take according to their particular institutional roles. Typically, the format involves chains
of question-answer sequences.
But the question-answer pre-allocation format is only a minimal characterisation of the speech
exchange system. In other words, any range of actions may be done in a given turn, provided
that they are done in the form of a question-answer. Let’s take as example the transcript of a
rape trial taken from Levinson (1992):
A: You have had sexual intercourse on a previous occasion, haven’t you.
B: Yes.
A: On many previous occasions?
B: Not many.
A: Several?
B: Yes.
A: With several men?
B: No.
A: Just one?
B: Two.
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A: Two. And you are seventeen and a half?
B: Yes.
Source: Levinson, 1992
As we see the defense attorney (A) and the alleged rape victim (B) restrict themselves to
producing questions and answers, and by this restriction of turn-taking beahviour, we gain a
powerful sense of context simply through the details of their talk.
However, the questions asked by A are of a particular type. They are not ‘real’ questions
(according to Searle), which are designed to inform the questioner about something which
he/she does not know; neither ‘exam’ questions (Searle) which are designed to test the
answerer’s knowledge about something which the questioner already knows. Rather they are
designed to get B to admit to something: namely, to having had sexual intercourse with
‘several’ men at the age of seventeen and a half. By these means the questions are designed to
construct a certain social image of B: as a woman with ‘loose morals'.
One of the most significant implications for the specifically ‘institutional’ character of actions
in formal settings, of the pre-allocated format is the fact that powerful constraints operate to
restrict the distribution of rights to express a personal opinion on the matter being discussed.
In courtrooms and broadcast news, questioners are required to avoid stating their opinions
overtly; rather their task is to elicit the stance, opinion, account of the one being questioned.
This is because in both settings talk is intended to be heard principally by an audience: the
jury in the trial court and the public in broadcast news.
Here are some strategies that have been found to be currently used by questioners to
undermine these constraints:
• constructing a negative social image of the witness (as in the example above)
• embedding critical or evaluative statements within questions (in broadcast news)
• citing ‘facts’ so as to emphasize the questioners’ contrastive relationship with an
interviewee’s statement
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• selectively ‘formulating’ the gist of the interviewee’s remarks
The studies on formal institutional talk have illustrated that formal institutional interactions
involve specific and significant narrowing of the range of options that are operative in
conversational interactions.
7.5. Non formal institutions
According to Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998), more common are institutional settings where the
interaction is less formally structured and talk appears more ‘conversational’ than courtroom
or interview talk. Certainly, if we count the number of questions asked by professionals and
by clients in such settings, we find that professionals ask by far the most, and often clients ask
virtually no questions. But unlike in formal settings, there is no norm that says one person
‘must’ ask questions and the other must answer. So, there are other aspects of talk to be
located in order to see where the orientations to context emerge.
7.5.1. Aspects of asymmetry
In institutional discourse there is a direct relationship between status and role, on the one
hand, and discursive rights and obligations, on the other. For instance, analysts of doctor-
patient interactions have observed that doctors typically ask far more questions than their
patients, and those questions tend to be more topic-directing than the few that the patients
ask.. However, it seems that patients are often complicit in maintaining a situation in which
the doctor is able not only to determine the topics that will be talked about, but also to define
the upshots and outcomes of the discussions.
For example, Frankel (1984) observes that while there is no institutionalized constraint
against patients asking questions and initiating new topics, overwhelmingly these two
activities are undertaken by doctors and not by patients. His analysis reveals that this
asymmetry emerges from two tacitly negotiated features of the talk:
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• doctors tend to ask certain kinds of questions, usually information-seeking questions
which require strictly factual responses. It means that they open up restricted options for
patients to participate in the encounter. Patients are thus situated as the providers of
information about their current physical state; and not, say, as individuals who can
contextualise their physical state by narrating life events.
• Patients themselves orient to and reproduce this asymmetry when they seek to offer
additional information to the doctor. This information is offered almost exclusively in
turns which are responses to doctor’s questions.
• Patients systematically withhold responses to doctor’s announcements of a diagnosis.
Given that the diagnosis represents a piece of ‘expert’ knowledge which the doctor passes
on to the patient, then by withholding responses other than acknowledgment tokens such
as ‘yeh’ or ‘um’, patients display their orientation to the expert status of the doctor.
Here is an example (taken from Fairclough, 1992:145-146) where this withholding is even
done when the patient has an opportunity to respond through the doctor leaving a gap
following the announcement of diagnosis:
(Physical examination)
1 Dr: Yeah.
2 (0.3)
3 Dr: That’s shingles.
4 (1.2)
5 Dr: That’s what it is:
6 (0.6)
7 Pt: Shingles.
8 Dr: Yes.
Source: Fairclough, 1992:145-146
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Notice that the diagnosis is produced over a series of turns alternating with pauses, in which
there is no response from the patient other than a single-word repetition of the doctor’s
conclusion.
7.5.2. Asymmetry and power
Many asymmetries in institutional discourse can be thought of in terms of the ‘power’ of
institutional agents to establish the participation opportunities of laypersons (cf. Hutchby and
Wooffitt, 1998).
1) One kind of example can be found in Drew’s work on courtroom interrogation. He
observes how the pre-allocated question-answer format of courtroom interaction gives
attorneys a certain discursive power which is not available to witnesses: the power of
summary.
As a questioner, the attorney has ‘first rights’ to pull together evidence and ‘draw
conclusions’: in other words to define the meaning, the terms and the upshot of a particular set
of answers. This kind of power that is available to anyone, in whatever context, who asks a
series of questions of a co-participant. The added significance in the courtroom is that the
witness is systematically disabled from asking any questions of her/his own, or of taking issue
with the attorney’s final summary.
Think of how the pre-allocated question-answer format applies to classroom talk,
and how it gives teachers a certain discursive power.
2 Another example is the going first and the going second in an argument. Thus, a basic
structural feature of talk radio calls (in which callers introduce topics or issues on which
they propose opinions) is linked to the differences in power between hosts and callers. The
principal activity in these interactions is that of argument. Callers offer opinions on issues
and hosts then debate those opinions, frequently taking up opposing stances in the process.
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Arguing about opinions is a basically asymmetrical activity. In whatever context it occurs.
Thee are significant differences between setting out an opinion (going first), and taking issue
with that opinion (going second). Sacks proposed that those who go first are in a weaker
position than those who get to go second, since the latter can argue with the former’s position
simply by taking it apart (merely by challenging the opponent to expand on, account for,
his/her claims). Thus, while first position arguers are required to build a defense for their
stance, those in second position do not need to do so.
Find one example of an argument talk-in-interaction and notice if the ‘going first
and the going second’ power asymmetry applies to your data.
On talk radio this asymmetry is ‘built into’ the overall structure of calls. Callers are expected,
and may be constrained, to go first with their line, while the host systematically gets to go
second. The fact that hosts systematically have the first opportunity for opposition within calls
thus opens to them argumentative resources which are not available in the same way to
callers. These resources are powerful, in the sense that they enable the host to constrain callers
to do a particular kind of activity – to produce ‘defensive’ talk.
Examples of ‘resources for power’ are the class of utterances including So? or What’s that got
to do with it? , as in the following case of a caller complaining about the number of mailed
requests for charitable donations she receives:
Caller: I have got three appeals letters here this week. (0.4) All askin’ for
donations. (0.2) . Two from those that I always contribute to anyway.
Host: Yes?
Caller: But I expect to get a lot more.
Host: So?
Caller: Now the point is there is a limit /to
/What’s that
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got to do what’s that got to do with telethons though.
Caller: Because telethons (continues)
Source: Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998
As an argumentative move, the ‘So’ achieves two things. First it challenges the relevance of
the caller’s complaint within the terms of her own agenda (that charities represent a form of
‘psychological’ blackmail). Second, because it stands alone as a complete turn, it requires the
caller to take the floor again and account for the relevance of her remark.
The discursive power of the host emerges here (cf. Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998) not out of a
pre-allocated question-answer format (because the turn-taking is much more ‘conversational’
than in courtroom, for instance), but as a result of the way calls are structured overall. (the
callers must begin by taking up a position means that argumentative resources are distributed
asymmetrically between host and caller).
The important thing to bear in mind is that one should not seek to treat power as a monolithic,
one-way process. The exercise of powerful discursive resources can always be resisted by a
recipient. For example, Drew discusses how witnesses utilize resources that are available for
evading or challenging the strategic implications to be detected in attorneys’ questioning.
Hutchby (1998) shows how callers may resist the second position challenges of hosts in
numerous ways.
Look at the following two extracts from two different medical interviews and see
in what ways they are different.
I
Doctor: Hm hm…Now what do you mean by a sour stomach?
Patient: What’s a sour stomach? A heartburn
Like a heartburn or some /thing
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D: / Does it burn over here?
P: yeah
It – I think it like – If you take a needle
and stick / ya right there’s a pain right here /
D: / hm / hm hm
P: and and then it goes from here on this side to this side.
D: Hm hm Does it /go into the back/
P: / it’s all up here. No it’s all right
up here in front.
D: Yeah And when do you get that?
P: Well when I eat something wrong.
D: How – How
Soon after you eat?
P: Well, probably and hour…maybe /less.
D: / About an hour?
P: Maybe less…I’ve cheated and I’ve been drinking
which I shouldn’t have done.
D: Does drinking make it worse?
P: Ho ho uh Yes…
Especially the carbonation and the alcohol.
D: Hm…hm…How much do you drink?
P: I don’t know. Enough to make me
go to sleep at night…and that’s quite a bit.
D: One or two drinks a day?
P: Oh no no no hump it’s (more like) ten/….at night
D: / How many drinks a night.
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P: At night.
D: Whaddaya ..What type of drinks?
P: Oh vodka yeah, vodka and ginger ale.
D: How long have you been drinking that heavily?
P: …Since I’ve been married.
II
P: but she really has been very unfair to me. Got /no
D: / hm
P: respect for me /at all and I think. That’s one of the reasons
D: /hm
P: why I drank so /much you /know and
D: / hm / hm are you
You back are you back on it have you started drinking /again
P: / no
D: oh you haven’t (unclear)
P: no but em one thing that the
lady on the Tuesday said said to me was that. if my mother
did turn me out of the /house which she thinks she
D: / yes hm
P: may do coz..she doesn’t like the way I’ve been she has
Turned me o/ before and em she said that
D: / hm
P: I could she thought that it might be possible for m
me to go to a council / flat
D: /right yes / yeah
P: /but she
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Said it’s a very she wasn’t /pushing it because my
D: /hm
P: mother’s got to sign a whole /lot of things and
D: / hm
P: she said it’s difficult / and em there’s no rush over
D: / hm
P: it. I I don’t know whether. I mean one thing they say in
AA is that you shouldn’t change anything for a year.
D: hm yes I think that’s wise. I think that’s wise
(5 seconds pause) well look I’d like to keep you know seeing
you keep you know hearing how things are going from
time to time if that’s possible.
Source: Fairclough, 1995:144-145
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7.6. Summary Institutional talk is defined in opposition to mundane conversation which is the
benchmark against which any other type of talk is defined;
There are two types of institutions: formal and non-formal.
• Studies of formal settings have focused on the ways in which participants
orient to a strict turn-taking format called turn-type pre-allocation
(question-answer sequences), which leads to discursive asymmetry.
Strategies which are currently used by questioners to undermine these
constraints:
• the pre-allocated question-answer format of courtroom interaction gives
attorneys a certain discursive power;
• the going first and the going second in an argument: those who go first are
in a weaker position than those who get to go second, since the latter can
argue with the former’s position simply by taking it apart.
• constructing a negative social image of the witness (as in the example above)
• embedding critical or evaluative statements within questions (in broadcast
news)
• citing ‘facts’ so as to emphasize the questioners’ contrastive relationship with
an interviewee’s statement
• selectively ‘formulating’ the gist of the interviewee’s remarks
Many asymmetries in institutional discourse can be thought of in terms of the
‘power’ of institutional agents to establish the participation opportunities of
laypersons.
83
7.7. End of UNIT TEST
Answer the following questions:
1. How do you define ‘institutional talk’?
2. Think of examples of formal/non-formal institutions.
3. What kind of institutions are you personally familiar with? Which are the
constraints of this particular institution?
4. Which are, in your opinion, the constraints of classroom talk?
5. Which are the discursive powers typical to classroom talk?
6. In what ways is knowledge about institutional talk relevant to teaching?
BIBLIOGRAPHY Coposescu, Liliana, 2002, The Construction of Meaning in the Interaction between Native
Speakers of English and Romanians(cap. 5) – Editura Universitatii Transilvania din
Brasov, ISBN 973-635-103-3;
______________Issues of Pragmatics, 2004 Edit. Universitặţii Transilvania din Braşov,
ISBN 973-635-276-5;
Drew,Paul and Heritage, eds.1992 Talk at Work:Interaction in Institutional Settings, CUP
van Dijk,T.A., 1985, Handbook of Discourse analysis, London: Academic Press
